Theo, you have to learn, when we win the judges have finally come to their senses, when we lose, the judges are blind corrupt and insane.:lol:
[QUOTE=slc2;4033089]
Theo, you have to learn, when we win the judges have finally come to their senses, when we lose, the judges are blind corrupt and insane.:lol:[/QUOTE]
Word. 
[QUOTE=freestyle2music;4033077]
Because 3 of the 5 judges had Isabelle on the first spot.
And the Dutch judge gave Ravel 9% higher then Isabell.
Hello wake up ! It’s the talk of the day.
And just for your information I have a closer relation and a very deep feeling for Ravel, and I loved it that he and Steffen won, but it’s the same old story again. Solution : 7 judges and the highest and lowest score scratched <period>[/QUOTE]
So what, that is what competition is for, to get OPINIONS.
How many times have opinions denied Ravel or any other a win and is that not part of the game, that is played around opinions?
There is another thread for that discussion, that was my point.:yes:
[QUOTE=Plantagenet;4033000]
What a horse Ravel is…very exciting to see the USA win the WC!
I also expected Ashley to get a higher score…any ideas as to why not? I keep hearing that the judges want to see you do well multiple times before they are willing to give you the big scores. Anyone here think so?
Also, does anyone else think Nadine looks crammed together and not through her back? (despite the legs flying everywhere)[/QUOTE]
i thought ashley’s ride was the most correct - it was quite lovely. however it didn’t have that manufactured tension (which i dont like at all) that is necessary to win nowadays… (ie wow factor) … i think she should of scored higher.
i also think that nadine is just… yuk. that neck is so wrong and she is ridden so tight. just not my cup of tea.
i thought that IW should of won. her ride seems “better” , altho i think ashley’s was the most correct of all. so kudo’s for her. i hope she stays true and doenst change how she rides now that she is sooo close.
I disagree.
In person Nadine is BEAUTIFUL and so elastic. She does not appear tense at all.
I agree that Ashley doesn’t have as much WOW factor and that is scored, I think, as technical difficulty. But still an AMAZING and harmonious ride. This was a very tough field and Anne Gribbons said in the beginning, very evenly matched, so the competitors really had to crank it up to get those scores.
And congrats Steffan!! I saw him before the competition talking to the owners and he had a gleam in his eye like some magic was going to happen and it did! Wish I could have bet on him!
Did you see the one handed one-tempis during the ceremony?? Pretty cool!!
In ashley’s test there werre quite a few MORE-THAN-WOW moments like that unbelievable half pass.
I’m one of the Nadine fans. She is very energetic, but she is also very flowing and very correct in most of what she does.
ok, probably a stoopid question ;), but why is manufactured tension considered a good thing and added difficulty when supposedly in dressage it is all about relaxation (you know the bottom of the training scale), harmony etc?
eta. yes i think Ashley had some amazing moments, the half passes were really nice… it literally was the only ride that gave me chills and made me happy.
the others, while maybe correct as in no errors, just pretty much left me cold.
If you had been there and were not an internet feed judge, you would have seen what the judges did and why they scored as they did. “Manufactured tension” - wtf?
[QUOTE=Coreene;4033311]
If you had been there and were not an internet feed judge, you would have seen what the judges did and why they scored as they did. “Manufactured tension” - wtf?[/QUOTE]
That is what I was thinking, plus if you have scribed, you know that it depends where you stand what the performance looks like and what you may miss.
That is why some are judges and the rest of us are not, because they know and see what the rest don’t, important when some rides are so close.
no wonder dressage has such a bad name 
ask a question and you are told what a bad person you are
maybe manufactured tension aren’t the right words - but you have to admit that the difference between say ashley’s ride, which was very harmonious, correct and relaxed and any of the other top rides is tension. whether you want to consider good or bad tension is guess depends on how you view it.
but since relaxation is the bottom of the training scale i don’t get why adding in that amped up energy (ie wow) is needed and why it scores so high…
I thought, in the details, that Ashley’s ride also lacked some preciseness. What always strikes me about the top riders is how spot on their timing is, with everything in the right places. There was just a little less of that in Ashley’s ride.
"ask a question and you are told what a bad person you are "
No one said that. They just didn’t agree with you. There’s a difference.
“Manufactured tension”. What do you mean? The reins look too tight? Horse looks too excited? Horse lifting his legs up too far? Horse’s neck looks too shortened to you? Horse has an ‘exaggerated’ look to it? The motions are just too fast?
There is a certain amount of ‘tension’ with impulsion and that’s very obvious in the collected gaits - or should be. These horses are trained to perform with maximum impulsion. That means harnessed energy, that’s what bends their joints, swings their back and hips and shoulders. Look at videos of Karin Offield riding Lingh vs Edward Gal. The horse has more impulsion with Edward. It gives him an ‘exaggerated’ look, if you will. It’s what some people call ‘sparkle’ or ‘flair’ or ‘panache’. It’s impulsion that gives the gaits more lift, more bounce, more flexion of the joints, the performance more ‘oomph’.
My own feeling is that there is a certain amount of excitement in the horses. They actually look rather pleasantly quiet most of the time in the warmup, except when they’re playing. I look more at how the horses look when they’re schooling, because in the ring, the rider is asking for the utmost, it’s extremely noisy, bright and distracting, and the horses get excited.
I have a point at which to me, it seems too hectic and too excited. I think most people do, but it’s important to realize that that for an international rider or judge, that point might be farther up the ladder than people who do lower level dressage might think it should be.
At one point Nadine made a couple turns that even Robert Dover commented on as being too quick and hectic, but it seemed to not get reflected in a much lower score, I guessed ‘really good but too fast’ is a 7, and not a 3 or 4. Some people want it to be a 3 or 4? I don’t think it’s going to be.
So obviously, there is a different of opinion as to exactly at what point it’s too fast and too hectic - or in some cases that isn’t it at all, it isn’t being condoned by the judge at all, but other items bring the score up.
Too, modern tastes simply are for very, very hot horses. We want to see invisible aids and horses that come out for class after class and eagerly do extended trots and piaffes without the rider so much as twitching a muscle. That sort of horse is just - hot. And sometimes at shows they get excited.
“Preciseness”. Ashley’s ride wasn’t actually lacking in precision, I don’t think so at all. She just had a few things that brought her score down, actually I thought the score was low by 2-3 points, but I probably missed something.
i dont think, you could say any of the top 3 horses were “relaxed” - or, at least i couldn’t say that.
to me a lot of it looks like auction riding where you do what it takes to make the legs go as far/high as possible.
think about it - i think it was nadine’s extension that everyone cheered for and RD even made a comment about how high those legs were going - i thought it was so tension filled/non tracking up, and her neck just so cranked in a tight/short. While i agree that the gaits should get better with training - how high a horse flings its legs is not, to me, a sign of correct dressage training.
the horse being able to do the movements correctly in a relaxed and harmonious way - is.
but hey - i am all for “old school” dressage… so i don’t really expect others to agree with me. nor do i think that dressage will be able to be accessible to the “masses” unless you dumb it down like they are. “how high a horse throws it legs” and “how precise the movements are” are easy things for the masses to get. all this technical stuff like throughness, correct usage of the back, self carriage, engagement, collection, forward thinking hands etc etc is too deep and wont sell dressage.
Shuffling about in a moribund trot is not relaxation. Neither is it dressage.
What Steffen Peters and Ravel did in the WC qualifier was. The people that appreciate that are not dumb, i expect they have some small clue of what is involved.
[QUOTE=fiona;4033720]
Shuffling about in a moribund trot is not relaxation. Neither is it dressage.
What Steffen Peters and Ravel did in the WC qualifier was. The people that appreciate that are not dumb, i expect they have some small clue of what is involved.[/QUOTE]
? who said anything about “Shuffling around in a moribund trot?”
do you think that ashley’s ride was shuffling? because i thought her ride was fabulous and relaxed and harmonious and is what i mean by “relaxed” and is the kind of riding i like to see.
[QUOTE=slc2;4033089]
Theo, you have to learn, when we win the judges have finally come to their senses, when we lose, the judges are blind corrupt and insane.:lol:[/QUOTE]
What worries me the most is that when these finals were held in Aachen Isabell would have won, when they were held in Den Bosch Anky would have won, and now because it was Las Vegas Steffen won.
Like Anky stated in an article today : Isabell now knows how I allways felt at Aachen.
Theo
[QUOTE=mbm;4033739]
? who said anything about “Shuffling around in a moribund trot?”
do you think that ashley’s ride was shuffling? because i thought her ride was fabulous and relaxed and harmonious and is what i mean by “relaxed” and is the kind of riding i like to see. :)[/QUOTE]
mbm - what you mean by “relaxed” is not what the meaning of relaxation in the training scale is. At the recent FEI trainers conference Henk van Bergen described “relaxtion” in the training scale as the “ability to feel the riders aids”. Of course this was in the USDF Connection magazine- but then again you aren’t even a member of USDF…
"“how high a horse throws it legs” and “how precise the movements are” are easy things for the masses to get. all this technical stuff like throughness, correct usage of the back, self carriage, engagement, collection, forward thinking hands etc etc is too deep and wont sell dressage.
"
Watch out precious, when you step off that high horse you’re going to have a long way back down to the ground!!!
" i am all for “old school” dressage"
Ever watch Podhajsky? In a competition, his horses ran around like their tails were on fire. You don’t get much older old school than that. I’m not sure if the ‘old school’ dressage you prefer actually exists.
“Relaxed” doesn’t mean the horse is moving around like the queen on sedatives doing the royal wave. It means the horse is able to listen to the rider, and his muscles let the aids go through his body.
He’s SUPPOSED to be moving like he has a bus to catch.
When you’re ready, why don’t you let us all in on how you avoided becoming one of ‘the masses’. Should make for fascinating reading. I’ve read a lot of arrogant things here, I’ve even tried to write some of them…but nothing…NOTHING quite as primo as THAT.
WTG Steffen! I just saw him clinic at Equine Affaire in Ohio which was FABULOUS! Loved watching Ravel go in both the Grand Prix & Freestyle. IW had a mistake in the 2s and opted to not try them again. If she had and went mistake free, she probably would have taken the title again. LOVE Nadine, although, I will say that she was more relaxed in the Grand Prix than Freestyle. In the Freestyle, she looked like she was really trying hard to keep from just blowing. Pop Art had a very nice go as well which I thought should have scored a tad higher just based on the technical aspect. The one thing that I really didn’t care for is Whisper’s walk work. It just seems disjointed and hitchy at times which may be attributed to the action up front. Dunno, I just couldn’t figure out what was going on with that…
[QUOTE=dutchfan;4034100]
mbm - what you mean by “relaxed” is not what the meaning of relaxation in the training scale is…[/QUOTE]
so again, what ashley presented was not correct dressage? obviously the judges thought so as she scored fairly well, so did RD as his comments were quite complimentary.
as for my version of old school… klimkes riding is a very good example of what i “like” , also monica theodorescu, and now ashley holzer, and a few others…
i haven’t seen podhasjky live, so no can’t comment there.
what i have seen of older “style” dressage - it looks far more relaxed that many rides nowadays.
