Disclaimer, I am not a judge and I most certainly was not there so I can not speak about what those people were thinking or saying, this is just my opinion.
The one handed whipping on the first day happened once and in a location that they might not have actually seen it happen. It is one of those things that now that you know it is there it is obvious but if you did not know it was there, not so obvious.
I am definitely not griping about my score. Thank you to the @Moogles for pointing out the (truth)- that it was a test of mostly 6’s, with a couple of lower marks. It is hard to see past the total score to remember to focus on the individual numbers sometimes. I thought it was fair, but seeing this ride get an 8% lower score is downright insulting, like the above poster said. And that is why I posted my video.
You need to take into account the actual tests and that it’s hard to make a score comparison between such different tests.
I-2 has 28 boxes (counting the single collective) and a total of 340 points possible.
2-3 has 32 boxes (counting the collectives) and a total of 410 points possible.
Not bothering to account for coefficients, the I-2 ride for a 50% scored, ON AVERAGE, 6.2 per box so given that the score was around 50, we can safely assume that there were more than a few scores much lower than 5.
The 2-3 ride for a 59% scored, ON AVERAGE, 7.6 per box, so probably scored lower on coefficients, and higher on rider marks. There are 2 such collectives on the 2-3 test and only 1 on the I-2 test and I think we’re all in agreement on who is the more effective rider.
I think we’re also all in agreement on which horse has the better gaits which is factored into each and every movement. The judges saw enough of the three gaits in the I-2 test to judge and score them.
Quite honestly though, I’d rather send my horse to someone who can’t ride on the bit or get their horse to leave the rail and do a circle at B, but is non abusive about their incompetence, than to someone who rides “I2” like Shelley Browning.
The first rider is at least kind to the horse even if they are delusional.
Shelley Browning is just a flat out abusive disgrace who has enough access to resources that she should know better. I hope she is reading this thread and seriously contemplating taking up tennis, because she has no business riding a horse.
And I hope whoever trains her really, really needs the money to allow that to go on in their program. Who knows, maybe their whole life collapsed recently and the only way they can get back on their feet is to fellate mephi$tophele$.
Forgive me if this has been addressed. On her blog, Writing of Riding, Erica Franz makes these observations about the judges, and I am going to attempt to cut and paste it here. My question is, if this is true, and I have no reason to think it is not, how can judges with no experience showing FEI become judges?
Judges Present at The Adequan West Coast Dressage Festival, Del Mar
But hold on, wait a minute. Cesar’s Athlete details on the FEI website show only two competitions for Cesar, both in 2010. Where are all the other years he was competing at the FEI level?!
Is he just overselling himself then? Is he really qualified to be a 4* judge? I’m confused. [h=3]THOMAS LANG[/h]
Here’s an odd duck. According to the FEI, Thomas Lang doesn’t even have a performance record. What qualifies him to be a 5* judge?
Searching on the internet yields only a Facebook profile and a few brief mentions in news articles. Does he even ride horses? [h=3]FREDDY LEYMAN[/h]
The same goes for Freddy, not a single performance on record with the FEI. [h=3]ISOBEL WESSELS[/h]
One saving grace, Isobel actually has a competition record. She’s a very quiet rider, but very disappointing to see her horse behind the vertical like we see everywhere else
So, I have to ask. Isobel, did you judge the test ridden by Shelley Browning, and if you did why did you give her a qualifying score and not dismiss her outright? [h=3]WILLIAM WARREN[/h]
How surprising, yet another judge with no performance record according to the FEI. That being said, he’s easy to find other places on the internet so he isn’t a complete ghost. He does ride, and how unsurprising it is that his horse is behind the vertical the whole time. [h=3]JOAN MACARTNEY[/h]
Yet another judge with no performance record with the FEI. She’s also listed as retired as of 01/01/2014. [h=3]CHARLOTTE TRENTELMAN[/h]
Charlotte’s listed on the FEI site, but no performance records found
For me, my concerns are the same as everybody’s here, and summed up in the Writing of Riding article, https://www.writingofriding.com/in-the-media/the-dressage-community-has-failed-shelley-browning/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_term=the-dressage-community-has-failed-shelley-browning&utm_content=0&utm_campaign=PostPromoterPro
I thought it was overkill. Furthermore, when I saw that this author was one of those fanatics about anti deep and round, she lost my respect.
If the author had enough time to look up all the judges bios, she could have looked up the day sheets to see that it was Charlotte Trentleman and Freddy Leyman who were judging that ride. Certainly no need to bring any of the other judges into it.
A lot of people mentioning the trainer. I am sort of surprised the trainer’s name hasn’t been found.
Jane Arrasmith, Iron Horse Ranch. http://www.ironhorseranchdressage.com/
That said, I do not believe we should always fault trainers. Lord knows my bad performances were not my trainers’ fault.
Eye opening about the judges.
so where is the video- how is it that people showing publicly a t this level can get their video deleted like that
why do you say that?
these judges specifically? I have no idea who they are ! sorry. clueless.
I think that is the question of the day! yes!
I some what wonder if it is gone by no choice of someone trying to protect this person or dressage.
If the video got reported/flagged enough on Facebook, it might have been removed by Facebook.
(Yes, I suppose I am reaching here.)
I don’t know if you are reaching @trubandloki I think it is more likely that it was not taken down at the riders request…
Read that blogpost. I think only one of the judges has any record at FEI. Some have no record of showing at all.
@KBC it was the only ride removed. Strange.
Oh. Was the rest of the video put back up?
Last I knew they whole video that this ride is on was removed.
I thought that the whole days live stream had gone, not just one ride? Still if it was just the one ride, we don’t know who took it down and why…
How far back does the FEI results online go? I looked on their person database for 3 big US names I could think of–Linda Zang, Anne Gribbons, and Robert Dover. It shows no results for any of them, though it lists them as judges/officials/committee members etc. I’m not sure what is available on the FEI database is comprehensive, especially for older scores. I know what’s available on USE’s online results only goes back so far, mid 2000s maybe?
I’d also wonder, if it’s not clearly a question of something like obvious blood, they wanted to consult a TD* over their options.
*Edit: Sorry, Hunter person, I forget that our Stewards are your TDs, and ring stewards in dressageland are volunteers with no power to do more than call the TD.
I’m just speculating here, but it may have been removed for no reason other than that the comments about it were somewhat taking over what was designed to be a positive, promotional page for the show series. When I watched it a couple of days ago, there were more than 19,000 views and additional furious comments were being added even as I was viewing the class.
There are plenty of Facebook pages where riding discussions get contentious but that wasn’t really designed to be one of them. It evolved that way as word of this particular ride spread, so maybe they were just trying to control the conversation.
I’m not saying it’s right or wrong to do so, I’m just saying that’s what it looks like to me. And I do have admin privileges on a couple of equestrian Facebook pages, myself. So maybe I’m picturing me in that role and thinking about what I’d do.
Anyway I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the eliminated rider requested or insisted that her video be removed, or infer that she has some undue power or sway over the content. She may have asked.
But maybe the page managers felt the focus was just in general becoming too negative when they’re trying to promote the rest of the show series in a positive light. That’s kind of how it looked to me as an outsider when I went to take a look and read the comments.
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