[QUOTE=JER;8105550]
Another thought: if the goal is name recognition and making the sport both appealing and easily understood to the average sport fan, why don’t we just end the tinkering with the format and rename the sport ‘Equestrian Beer Orgy’?[/QUOTE]
I think you’ve solved the age old question of how or make equestrian sports marketable to the general public! Maybe we should add some cheerleaders and a halftime show for good measure too 
[QUOTE=Jeannette, formerly ponygyrl;8105601]
Isn’t it possible that it would encourage conservative riding? Take the slow route, accrue some time faults, but make sure to finish? I’m not about to jump blindly on any bandwagon, certainly not an FEI one, but I’m willing to wonder their points…
Am I reading it right that they want Team A to send riders 1, 2, and 3, and then Team B to send their 3?? That seems like a huge unmentioned change - if it rains all afternoon there go the after lunch countries…[/QUOTE]
Typically the team strategy that I’ve always been exposed to involves at least three riders riding with a plan to get around, to be more conservative than when riding as an individual. The only rider who gets a free pass petal-to-the-metal is the final rider when the team already has three clear rounds. And yet, lots of teams still don’t finish.
[QUOTE=Jeannette, formerly ponygyrl;8105601]
Isn’t it possible that it would encourage conservative riding? Take the slow route, accrue some time faults, but make sure to finish? I’m not about to jump blindly on any bandwagon, certainly not an FEI one, but I’m willing to wonder their points…
Am I reading it right that they want Team A to send riders 1, 2, and 3, and then Team B to send their 3?? That seems like a huge unmentioned change - if it rains all afternoon there go the after lunch countries…[/QUOTE]
Even if not having a drop score does encourage riders to start on course with a more conservative approach, it will certainly encourage them to continue on after multiple refusals or on a tired horse rather than admitting it is not their day and retiring. I don’t see that as being conducive to safety at all.
[QUOTE=Sticky Situation;8105682]
Even if not having a drop score does encourage riders to start on course with a more conservative approach, it will certainly encourage them to continue on after multiple refusals or on a tired horse rather than admitting it is not their day and retiring. I don’t see that as being conducive to safety at all.[/QUOTE]
And remember - “In the jumping phases, the time of the round would be added for all team members so that a faster round of one team member could counterbalance a slower round of another member.”
So rider two and three have that additional pressure if rider one takes the “conservative approach.”
First, I think this was commented on the EN article but there is going to be a separate and more intensive look into the safety later this year, or so they say, so I do not think this is supposed to be all of the proposed changes for eventing overall to help improve the safety of the sport.
That being said, my 0.02$.
no drop score with less pressure to go super fast after a refusal can lessen risk overall, on the assumption that other team members do not then try and go overly fast to help offset the time. The idea being that all teams average out to having time on course and the goal becomes getting home all in one piece as it was more in the old days (or so it seems to me). This hinges on riders stepping up and riding safely though which has not always been the case (but the FEI can’t do too much about human stupidity). So give a drop score as well and then you might be set.
Adding making the team 3* vs individual 4* (or whatever the new stars), while not cost effective at all, could be safer at a world championship (doesn’t do much for the olympics though since that already is a 3*). Team riders could qualify and not have to then tackle a whole level above what they regularly compete at, meaning more teams can qualify and there would be fewer issues of a 3* horse not making the step up to 4* with the pressure of a team. Meanwhile individuals can qualify at 4* and be ready for it.
Bitting. I personally take issue with this because I have a horse that goes very very well in a very unconventional bit (mikmar). He is well trained on the flat and can lope over jumps in a snaffle but add some speed and adrenaline and a simple snaffle is not safe for him. He would break my nose if I tried to jump him around a course in a pelham and he would start stopping if I put him in anything twisted or sharp. If having him in this bit for XC and stadium means I would never be able to do an FEI event then bye bye eventing for me
And my final note. The ideas for name changes are a joke, but I can see how a different name might help the general public get an idea of what we do. But then what about dressage? Which to most people means absolutely nothing.
What is the drive to make eventung more popular with the public? It is mainly for pros to be able to make a living? Evebting has been around for a long time, and there were more events when it wasn’t nearly as popular. So really, what’s the REAL reason for pushing for eventing to be in the limelight? Cause I like it the way it is (was), and I love the name EVENTING. Maybe the pros can create their own evantathlon sport or whatever the hell they want to call it and leave Three Day Eventing to the ammies.
Does anyone know what the reasoning behind changing the name from combined training to eventing was about 15 years ago? Was it to give it a more unique name?
It’s so poorly written it looks like a rough draft written by an amateur writer and not copyedited before it went to press. It’s also hard to comprehend because it is so poorly written. Makes a very poor impression right off the bat.
The names suggested are ridiculous. “Eventing” is a time-honored name.
I don’t at all get the “event” vs. “sports” issue. The Olympics are about sports. So is eventing. Makes no sense to me.
Surely they can do bit checks for cross country as easily as they do for dressage?
[QUOTE=flyracing;8105991]
Does anyone know what the reasoning behind changing the name from combined training to eventing was about 15 years ago? Was it to give it a more unique name?[/QUOTE]
They were simply trying to give it a better name. I think they failed. “Equestrian Combined Event” is way more descriptive and you could still call it eventing and people would understand it.
The FEI is nuts. We don’t need them and I don’t think the Olympics benefits the horses.
So will anyone crucify me if I post a link to this thread on the FEI forums page?
What is the motive for making xc penalties lower for a stop? Are they wanting xc to play less of a roll?
Three Day Preventing …
[QUOTE=JER;8104646]
Eventing needs to show some leadership and foresight and extricate itself from the sinking ship of the Olympics.
The IOC is struggling to survive and remain relevant, but the truth is, in any just world, the IOC would be humanely destroyed. The IOC is a bastion of corruption and self-enrichment schemes, and the general public is catching on. The Olympic Games are unequivocally a boondoggle and huge drain of resources on the nation and local community that hosts the games. This is not news – it has been known since the early 1970s, when the citizens of Denver rejected the Games that had been awarded to the city. For those of you who are not familiar with this history, the Guardian ran an excellent piece on it last week: When Denver rejected the Olympics in favor of the environment and economics.
Since then, we’ve seen all kinds of disasters associated with hosting the Olympics. There was the Montreal financial debacle, the Salt Lake City bribing scandal, the unconscionable costs of Beijing and Sochi, the white elephants of disused billion-dollar buildings that make up an Olympic ‘legacy’. We’ve seen enough. It’s not pretty. Stop the effing bleeding already.
Right now, the IOC is in a bit of a pickle. No one wants to host the 2022 winter Olympics. Well, not exactly ‘no one’ – the two hopeful hosts are Almaty, in the kleptocracy known as Khazakstan, and then the winter sports hotspot known as Beijing. Seriously. The IOC is trying to bribe more savory locales (like Switzerland) but is finding little enthusiasm.
Why is this all relevant to eventing? Because the IOC is fighting to stay alive and corrupt, they’re trying to make deals with potential hosts. One upshot from the 2022 no-bids issue is that the IOC is now willing to let hosts axe certain sports or entire disciplines so that they don’t have to build the facilities. First up in the guillotine are the various ‘sledding’ sports: luge, bobsled, skeleton. The track is a huge expense and unlikely to be used again. None of these sports have any grassroots or public participation whatsoever. (I mean, when was the last time – or the first time – that anyone called you on Saturday morning and said ‘Let’s go luge.’) The IOC knows this, and no longer requires a track as part of a bid.
Recently, I was talking to the coach of the most successful women’s skeleton program (their top two girls came from eventing :)), and he said that sliding sports know their days in the Olympics are numbered. It’s a matter of when, not if.
I think the same is probably true of eventing, and this ‘equestrathlon’ nonsense makes it all the more probable. The answer for eventing, is not to turn the sport into this silly pageant for the dignitaries and criminals and corporate enablers of the IOC. It’s to get the hell out now.
The real reason sport orgs turn themselves inside out trying to please the IOC is because most sport orgs are presided over by people who are trying to get into the IOC. These are political animals of questionable morals who want to get into the IOC to get their piece of the real prizes on offer. Some are outright criminals, too. I can think of one sport in which the president of the IGB is a man with a criminal record who is extremely rich. His goal is to be an IOC member, but his criminal record is something that even that lot can’t overlook. He’s a lovely guy in person, enough to make you forget the criminal part, but what you can’t forget is that he’s using the sport as a means to achieve a goal that has nothing to do with the sport or the good of the sport.
Eventing doesn’t need the Olympics. I suspect if the FEI said ‘we want out’, the IOC would come crawling back, because the worst thing that could happen to them is a domino effect of sports realizing they don’t need to kowtow to this outdated consortium of corruption.[/QUOTE]
Wonderful post JER. We, as a sport, fret so much about sending teams to compete in all the horse disciplines to the Olympics, we don’t see the bigger picture of the general decline of the Games and their rapidly decreasing relevance in the broader world of sports. Long gone is any concept of sportsmanship or national team spirit in this era of foggy national affiliation allowing a sort of pick your flag country hopping. Claim residence in country A, train in country B, pick country C to represent then change primary citizenship to the most profitable country to set up a gym, rink, arena and coaching business. What’s the point anymore? That doesn’t even touch on scholarships and grants in core sports to compete against the country they got the money from and train in.
Perhaps it’s time to worry about alternatives instead of clinging to the elitist FEI and the bloated special interest bureaucracy of the IOC and trying to appease them by changing the traditions our horse disciplines are founded on.
Who needs the Olympics in their current incarnation and obviously going further down the slippery slope of special interests? Do they even benefit anybody except the uber elitist levels?
It seems to me that the cross-country phase of eventing is already quite popular for WEG and Olympic ticket sales. I couldn’t find the actual numbers but I don’t recall anyone being disappointed by the tens of thousands of people at WEG in Lexington or the Olympics in London.
[QUOTE=clivers;8106280]
So will anyone crucify me if I post a link to this thread on the FEI forums page?[/QUOTE]
Good idea. Cross-pollination always adds to the discussion.
Having a separate competition for team and individuals at the Olympics is not new. That was done at the Sydney Olympics. Separate jogs, slightly different xc courses, and I believe different dressage tests. At the time the reasoning was that a competitor should not be able to medal twice for one performance. This later evolved into the second stadium jump round for individual medals instead of completely separate competitions.
[QUOTE=Jealoushe;8106374]
What is the motive for making xc penalties lower for a stop? Are they wanting xc to play less of a roll?[/QUOTE]
Someone posted here on another page saying that lessening the penalties might make people think twice in a situation where a refusal is less costly and allow for a minute to regroup rather than push for a jump out of a bad situation. That speaks to safety which made sense to me, but who knows why the FEI proposed it. Who knows why they propose anything, really.
[QUOTE=poltroon;8106439]
It seems to me that the cross-country phase of eventing is already quite popular for WEG and Olympic ticket sales. I couldn’t find the actual numbers but I don’t recall anyone being disappointed by the tens of thousands of people at WEG in Lexington or the Olympics in London.[/QUOTE]
XC in Sidney was the single large crowd at the Sidney Olympics not including opening and closing ceremonies.
The biggest question, IMO, is one of how these changes will impact safety. To me the concept of three to a team with no drop score is problematic, as is the idea that one competitor can “make up” time from another. How is this good for horses or riders, particularly if competitor A was a bit slow and competitor C feels the pressure to “make up” that time? Are we now going to see jumper riding in our stadium arena to make up for a slower round? Are times and courses subsequently going to change to favor the jumpers?
We also need to take a serious look at our philosophy and direction for the future. We have a few options:
–Stick with the Olympics at any cost and recognize that this might make our sport unrecognizable–a shadow of its former self.
–Stick with the FEI but not the Olympics and risk the FEI mucking with our sport but having a bit more pull.
–Ditch the FEI entirely and make our own governing body with our own world championships, international rules and competitions, etc.
–Ditch everybody and have a US only sport that we can later re-export (reining is now international, hunters are gaining ground outside the US).
–Split and take two different approaches to the sport (a US version not affiliated with the FEI/Olympic version–so Combined Training vs. Equestrathon or whatever BS name they choose).
Some of the other changes are smoke and mirrors. The name change? Aside from being silly and unpronounceable, the concept is a distraction. It focuses our conversation away from the other controversial postings here.
I don’t necessarily agree with the format of team vs. individual, either, but that’s less of a concern as it is specific to a few competitions and doesn’t impact the rules of the sport at other competitions. I am not naive enough to assume it will never haver a trickle down effect, but at this point there are so many things that are a bigger concern. I also wonder how these changes could affect nations that don’t have qualified teams–should places like India, Belarus, Jamaica, Russia, and Thailand have to send four star riders while teams only send three star riders? However, if a country has three 3 star riders but nobody at four star, should they be able to send a team? I can see the pros and cons each way.
–The bit change has the potential to be a good thing, but the problem is who is making the rules and how. My trust in the FEI, USEF, and USEA is shaky.
–Changing the scoring system only makes it more complicated (not spectator friendly!). The proposed changes also diminish the importance of cross country in the scoring. So we can get the weaker XC riders around with fewer penalties, which means our sport is even MORE at the mercy of dressage scores. If we just want to watch dressage horses do some jumpy stuff, shouldn’t that be a different sport? This is especially true if we keep with the CIC model of show jumping before XC, where riders can run harder without worrying about next-day recovery. I am not opposed to the CIC model as a prep for a CCI, but the new scoring indicates we are moving in that direction. The old formula was 60% XC, 30% dressage, and 10% SJ. The dressage coefficients were designed to keep that balance. This change makes one stop XC barely worse than two rails SJ. So I can again take my jumper, nurse him around a not-four-star XC course, and even if he has a stop, he will have already show jumped well and made up time for my slower competitor in that phase . . . . YIKES!
Turning our sport into a place for rejected jumpers with a modicum of bravery and balance is not what I want. We won’t beat the Germans at their game; we’ll just buy their horses (at a mark up) and continue to have mediocre results on an international stage. The changes in our sport have been and continue to lead us down this path. I, for one, am not a fan. It isn’t worth it. If I had wanted to be a jumper rider, I would be in the jumper ring.
On a related note:
There are many ways we could be more spectator friendly without changing the sport itself. We simply need to look at the events that draw in local spectators–non-horsey folks–and see how they do it. Rebecca Farms and Red Hills reach out to the local community. Why don’t other events do more of this–ads in the local to-do guide/weekly, ads in the local paper, signs, bulletin boards, etc.? Then there is making the event accessible–parking, transportation/shuttles, availability of food, etc. Rebecca sets a big tent up on the hill so spectators can bring a chair or blanket, sit on the hill, and see most of the course from the shade. Food and beverages should be readily available to spectators, as should information on both the sport and the individual competitors in programs. Making it a “day in the country” family outing with options for kiddos. Have a trade fair, bring in pony rides . . . Way easier than changing the rules of the sport for everyone! We didn’t even have to wear lycra with sponsor logos!
We had a family come through stabling (non-FEI) at Rebecca. The kids loved the palomino pony my barn mate was competing, and dad fell in love with coach’s big horse. I took the time to bring him out of the stall so they could meet him more personally. He had a fan club! The family said they would make a point to watch for those two horses and cheer for them–just because we took the time to let them pet a nose or two. We can’t make our sport much cheaper or more accessible for participation, but we CAN be spectator friendly for LOCAL spectators. Those are the folks who might join our ranks at the low levels, bring in business to vendors and visibility to sponsors, and eventually have favorites. Our riders, particularly big names, need to be OUT THERE during events, talking to spectators so that they can develop a fan base of non-eventers. THEN those people will tune in to watch them at Olympics and other things. Watching someone you’ve never heard of is not as fun as rooting for someone who was nice to you at the local horse trial in Atlanta or near San Francisco.
We will never get non-horsey spectators to watch much dressage, and we need to be okay with that.
Okay, long post over.
I can’t believe that we are having THIS discussion. I think Jon Holling said it best when he said if we don’t prevent catastrophic falls, we will not have a sport. Trying to remodel the sport for the Olympics or to remodel the WEG (see EN’s post) is not the issue. What happened to foxhunting in Britain will happen to eventing once PETA and other organizations like them take notice.
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