Badminton Spinoff -- A Course-Design Question

[Rackonteur]

I’ve been wanting to ask this for a few years now but couldn’t find my flame suit to zip up inside!

Why don’t modern cross-country obstacles look more realistic? I’m of an age that remembers when hunters jumped outside courses made of obstacles “like those to be met out in the hunt field” – so I wonder if eventing is copying show “hunter” courses, or what the reason is for all the child’s-toy-type obstacles? I can’t imagine a horse and rider meeting up with any such obstacles on a real cross-country gallop.

When did course designers start designing these toy-like obstacles, and why? Is it to entertain the spectators? To encourage children to take up eventing? To startle the horses? Because all the other course designers do it these days?

Serious question, asked out of honest curiosity, so please respond seriously and honestly, and skip the sniping and sarcasm that is all-too-common here on COTH.

[Highflyer1]

Partly to attract spectators, partly to increase the difficulty in ways that do not involve making the fences bigger/wider/more dangerous, partly because it’s fun, partly just because everything evolves over time. American hunter shows have nothing to do with it, since the vast majority of events are not in the US and the Europeans set the trends.

[Rackonteur]

Thank you. That makes a lot of sense to me.
And I get that the designers must enjoy designing all the fences. Big canoes, little log cabins, railroad cars … yep, cool.

[Willesdon]

Each CD also tends to have their own style. Eric Winter, who is doing Badminton, usually has notably less dressing on his courses than other people and so the fences look more “au natural”. Pierre Michelet, who has designed Pau for several years, always comes up with very beautiful and dramatic fences that look like a sculpture rather than any fence one might meet out hunting. Giacomo Della Chiesa introduced white-barked birch poles at Badminton when he designed the course and that idea has subsequently been widely used by other CDs because it makes the fence more visible. I believe the CDs also like to give a nod of recognition to the location of the event, such as particular architecture or building materials, and also to the Sponsors. I always liked the “Biffa Bins” at Blenheim which were huge plastic orange garbage bins in an arch over a fence looking splendidly odd: Biffa Waste Management was a sponsor. There is also a temptation, I suspect, to add extra fancy dressing because it is far cheaper to add pot plants and toys than build a solid new fence.