Cross country video (3+ hours worth) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivm1g5xVV4c
Those kiddos and ponies are amazing!
Oh the cuteness…
And I really, really wish we had that here. My tiny mare would have been perfect for it - she’s rideable and quite happy to jump the CCI** jumps. She got USEF-measured as a ‘pony’ too. If I lived in Europe, I’d have definitely sought to have her compete as an FEI pony. The big deal to me is that the courses are designed for equines who measure 149cm or below.
My ‘pony’ is now in combined driving - where adults are allowed to show ponies - and for the first time ever, she’s been taller than at least one of her competitors.
Many of our gripes would be addressed if only we would follow the example of our UK and European friends to allow ponies their place in the natural progression of education in horse sport. The cross country phase of eventing in particular is, for small folks, best begun on a suitably sized beastie.
I really do think that good ponies are best for young children to learn to ride (mine was evil but that’s beside the point, it was a shorter fall to the ground).
Once confident with the pony and if/when outgrowing them physically, the horse is next to be mastered. It is too bad that this tried and true tenet has slipped away from the U.S. consciousness.
Adults can ride ponies in FEI Eventing can they not? Wasn’t Karen O’Connor’s ride Teddy a pony? It would be nice to have eventing specifically for ponies though, I agree.
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Yes, adults can ride ponies at the regular FEI levels. No, adults cannot ride ponies in ridden FEI Pony divisions. Does that make sense?
You can send your tiny equine out on regular UL courses but you need to make sure that the course is right for them. A combination that is iffy for a regular-sized horse might be too iffy for them. You don’t want to put your small horse in situations where their margin of error might be significantly decreased.
Teddy had a pony certificate but he did get his measurement at a young age. Having seen him up close, I can say he was taller (and bigger) than my mare, who measures 148cm with shoes at age 12 and is very slight and narrow.
If you look in the pony competition rings in the US (and much of the equestrian world) you’ll see ‘ponies’ that probably wouldn’t pass a remeasurement.
The above would be a dream come true.
I try to keep large pony-small horses, ride a pony stallion, and my parents breed sport-ponies. For them, they are always able to sell these guys before they hit three. Of the dozen or so, I believe three are actually matched with riders who are going out and competing them, and the others were scooped by amateurs with no competition aspirations. (Which is perfectly fine, and these ponies are living the dream.)
But from my side, I’ve gotten called in the past two weeks looking for four large pony-small horse types, jumping around novice-training at home, that are trained, and a gritty kid could go and compete with, preferably under 20k. The trained part is key.I can’t find them! And I have contacts with the breeders, who’ve sent me videos of lovely, lovely ponies, but, they’re 4-6 years old, may have jumped through a chute, they don’t go on the bit, and aren’t ready for a junior to take on and gain confidence, even at 6.
At the end of the day too, why search to find these lovely types when you could go buy an OTTB, spend a few grand to have a good trainer put in the buttons, and end up spending less in the end?
I’m sure it’s frustrating for breeders too. I just wish there was a better funnel to get these young horses/ponies to good professionals at a reasonable cost so that they can have the training put in to go to these kids that can go compete them.
The problem is it’s tough to find anything (even an OTTB) that can pack a kid around Novice/ Training for under $20k because it costs almost that much to get them to that point. And if you have a nice pony that can be sold as a 3’ hunter pony it’s worth 2-3 times that $20k even without much of a record. Even the pony jumpers are worth a good bit more than pony eventers.
That little TB mare that won the jumpers at Pony Finals would have made a pretty sweet event pony, though!
I obviously didn’t think this through. I can see wanting to keep adults from competing with small children on ponies, however I agree that adults should not have to take their ponies around cross country courses designed for horses.
Would it be possible to have an open pony division, or are do you think the PTB would be resistant?
There wouldn’t be enough entries. I have seen pony divisions at BN but really, there’s nothing at BN that a pony can’t do.
When you get up to Prelim, you’re not seeing many ponies. At Training, many youngsters switch to horses and the ponies go to younger kids.
What are the jump dimensions for the Pony Champs?
I was just thinking we have a sale horse at my place that almost fits your criteria - still working on stadium jumping as he went from the track to fox hunting (big time fox hunting place so he’s jumped 4’ out in the field) and the weird colored poles were definitely odd, but he never had a refusal, just jumps weird right now but he’s getting better, more forward over the weird colored poles.
Then I was thinking we have had a few small horses come through that while lacked training, definitely could have been there eventually.
Then I remembered that they are all OTTB’s and aside from the previous fox hunter were all ‘rehomes’ ($500 or less depending on the ‘buyer’). So…yeah…
At the jumper show I go to, however, lots of ponies. It seems eventers are content with the relatively less expensive OTTB’s (for the most part) and the money is in the hunter/jumper/eq world.
