That’s a very serious accusation.
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She’s talking about the Supreme Court. And it’s true. Justice Clarence Thomas.
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But I seriously doubt dressage judges get gifts of that magnitude.
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Well should probably make that clear as making comments about Supreme Court justices in a conversation about dressage judging doesn’t make any sense.
One is national politics with the potential to impact millions of lives The other is a sport that a vanishingly small audience cares about.
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I’m Canadian. I try to follow U.S. (that’s United States) politics as little as possible. While it took me a moment, even I managed to work out that the shortform SC stands for Supreme Court.
Slow down. Read for clarity. Ask for clarification. We all, at some point, had to ask what rofl stands for!
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Given that this was a conversation about dressage judges, the first three times I read that “SC” was interpreted to be “South Carolina” since nobody else was talking about the Supreme Court and nobody really abbreviates it that way. As I’m a lawyer, anyone calling a Supreme Court justice a “judge” wouldn’t register with me.
As for clarity, well, sentences help.
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You were not alone…
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Perhaps I’ve been around more non-native-English speakers than you, but I really had no problem understanding the non-sentences, nor extrapolating that someone who is NOT a lawyer and not an EFL (English First Language) may not understand or may not even know that the folks who preside over the SC are justices and not judges. Hell, I betcha that there are plenty of people born and raised in the US, of reasonable intelligence who might make that mistake and get the two terms confused.
Sometimes the problem of “clarity” lies in the readers lap.
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What does this have to do with dressage? 
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Example of how people who adjudicate things even more important than dressage (is there such a thing? ) can also be swayed by their feelings towards those they are adjudicating.
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Thank you so much 
. As I mentioned before, I would love her to read the posts before answering 
I agree!! But still have you never received a small gift from somebody which made you feel friendly towards this person??
a nice example from Bavaria told by my husband from decades ago.
There was a rather rich family with two daughters… As we all know Bavaria can be chilly. So whenever the family arrived at a horse show they handed out warm blankets to all the judges….
It is what it is and @lazaret would probably call it a serious accusation but you could also interpret it as a thoughtful gesture 
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If Germany is so much better, then why are you here?
There is a huge difference between politely accepting a small token and being paid off.
Some of the ways it is counteracted in US dressage is that you have to get scores from more than one judge to qualify for any regional competition and why those shows have multiple judge panels.
You used an example of a junior rider that was the barn owner’s daughter making the national team the one year a boarder judge was on the panel. It’s not possible that it was the best year for her and her horse in competition? Juniors are notorious for losing interest or having too many other interests to take riding as seriously as necessary to make a national team. You said the judge was part of a panel - did that judge’s score rank much higher than the others? Did it skew the results so that someone else got left off the team? Those things all matter if you’re implying that the judge scored the girl higher than deserved.
I know that when I ride in front of judges I know well that I often feel scored a bit more harshly - they know I know what it is supposed to look like and what my horse is capable of.
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Right. Ok. Got it. “Go back where you came from.” Immigrants should never ever ever never ever have the right to point out faults or differences or anything that could be even remotely considered negative.
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I thought she’d moved back a while ago? I could be wrong, but thought I’d read that a while back.
Obviously Germany isn’t that great since judges can be bought there too based on her comments.
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There’s a study from 2000 that found that doctors are influenced to change their prescribing habits by gifts as small as pens (cited here)
It’s not unreasonable to suspect that gifts to judges can result in bias. Not sure that it at all applies to the FoC rides in question. But there you go.
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This, to me, is a very strange complaint. “Back in the day,” one needed a horse that could pull a cart or a plow and also act as transportation. One could say the modern dressage horse has more “purpose” than ever by being bred specifically for the sport of dressage versus a multipurpose family horse. It’s actually exciting to see how horses who have been purposely bred for a sport have evolved - jumpers are advancing significantly as well. We’ve not had this luxury for quite some time when it comes to breeding horses for a specific sport.
I’m also not at all convinced that said multipurpose horse didn’t have soundness issues or that light, expressive front ends suddenly dooms a horse to lameness.
Your post reminds me a lot of what the klassical people often chirp.
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In essence are there not 2 dressage markets? One comprises of the carriage horse front ends with dramatic toe flinging gaits seeking international scores and the other market is for horses the majority of riders (a/k/a amateur riders) can ride which don’t cost as much as a small country.
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Most of the elevated, large fronts are manufactured by training and the manipulation of gaits.
Take a look at this mare. This mare was in the 2023 World Breeders Young Horse Championship for 5 YR olds:
This is the same mare prior to import:
Huge difference in front end movement, all due to training.
Search for Totilas as a young horse if you haven’t seen it (quick google search doesn’t produce a video outside of what Dressage Hub posts and I don’t want to give them clicks). Totilas had huge front end movement, again, manufactured later in life.
I would agree that actual carriage horses such as the DHH are produced but they don’t have a significant presence in dressage. They are limited in numbers and don’t represent the breeding we see.
To me what you see is the evolution of training and horses that have become extremely adaptable and talented who can achieve the huge movement due to specialized breeding. Hate the training but recognize the difference between the horse and the what the rider is producing.
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I’m curious about the age of the mare in the second video. You say “prior to import,” but at what age?.
I’m also curious to hear opinions from others, but I can see the promise in the mare even when moving free. She has an active hind leg that pushes through, she is not restricted in the shoulder and has a nicely rounded knee at trot, and her canter and walk are quite nice. She is obviously more muscled in the riding video and has more topline, and that “bridge” allows her to articulate in her joints even more, and of course the rider is helping her keep that bridge by keeping her in the bridle.
I am far from an expert but I would venture a guess that there is no rider in the world who could score 9.7 for trot, 8.5 for walk, and 9.5 for canter at the World Breeding Championships for Young Horses - on a mediocre horse. Kudos to the breeder for producing that mare, to the owner who recognized her potential, and to the trainer and rider for bringing her along to this great achievement. It would be interesting to follow that mare’s development and see how far she goes up the ladder (although the erstwhile breeder in me secretly hopes that she goes into a breeding program to pass those genes along).
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