Nope! This is the exact point of the thread TBH - the AEC winner/career rider at that level (and others who were top 5 for the last several years at the same level) being up against the first time at BN horse and rider combos. They split the division into A and B, not Horse and Rider (or any other combo)
Maybe someone can say: I wonder why they split that way?
I have to disagree on this. In my case, it was the xc that separates the wheat from the chaff. I had a mare that landed us DFL after dressage and shot up the placings after XC that we were in the ribbons every time. This was doing BN.
I’m glad your experience was different. That is the way it is supposed to be. It shouldn’t be a dressage show. That’s not how it is in Area 1 though. Maybe it’s because A1 has – possibly – one of the highest concentrations of genuinely incredible horse flesh, and a lot of great riders and riding talent.
I have always had horses that finished on their dressage score, but they were never anyone’s interpretation of fancy. They could put down a decent dressage test (usually mid 30s) but that was not enough to be competitive. It’s not just about going home and making your dressage better – at the end of the day, a huge component of the scoring was based on movement and if you didn’t have a good mover, you weren’t going to get a 20 no matter how accurate your test was.
Keep in mind at the lower levels it is way easier to get a low penalty dressage score like a 20. That gives you a huge margin of error for XC and SJ - you can afford to pull multiple rails and have time faults, and in some classes, even have an XC refusal, and still place. It’s happened to me where the first and second placed horses in my division both had refusals on course because they put down that brilliant a dressage test.
I was just at a show a few weeks ago where the other BN division didn’t have any score lower than a 37 - the rest were 40s. I watched the tests and most of them earned those scores, IMHO. If someone had rolled along and gotten a 20, they could have very easily been in the top 3 after a refusal on XC. That’s hardly eventing in my view. That’s dressage with a side of jumpsies.
The events around here, Area VII, generally has a division for AAs and the same division for Open, where all the pros compete. Some have Rider and Horse divisions. The AA divisions fill up so there are multiple groupings - for example 'BN Amateur A, BN Amateur B, BN Open, BN Junior.
My most recent show, senior BN (about 28 people) had a total of:
2 Withdrawn
2 Eliminated
1 Rider fall
5 x one stop on xc
1 x 2 stops on xc
9 x one pole on stadium
1 x 2 poles on stadium
Lowest score finishing on dressage was 24.5, highest was 39.5. Luckily the jumping makes a difference at this level here!
RAyers for the win. I’m also a refugee from the hunter and it’s hideous what it has become. If you add all these micro slices of divisions so everyone can get a ribbon, the competition will be for the ribbon color. More divisions means more ribbons (added cost), more office staff to keep track of more divisions added cost), a longer day (need for more volunteers, which are in short supply already), more demands for even more remedial divisions, and boom, you’re in HJ land.
I don’t mean to sound harsh (and I am by no means competitive at Recognized either), but if your horse can’t be in the ribbons at Recognized, and a ribbon is really what you want, go where he is competitive. Use the Recognized competitions as a benchmark of your progress. Ribbons are pretty, it’s nice to see your name in the Chronicle, but is that really why we do this?
I’m just confused as to why anyone thinks a “lime green bean” or first time out at the level horse/ride should be winning…or even getting nice ribbons. If horses and riders with no experience can win and/or expect to win recognized divisions then there is something seriously wrong with the sport.
The divisions that exist can already solve all the problems that are reasonable to solve. Green beans being competitive is not a reasonable problem and it shouldn’t be solved.
I’ve been that junior on the $500 OTTB cleaning up and beating other juniors on ridiculously expensive horses (and being beat by ridiculously expensive horses) and also the adult amateur running with the big dogs on a horse that cost less than 5K winning weird colored ribbons and over the moon for it. I’ve also suffered through some dogs. Now 40 years after getting into this I’ve got the expensive horse. (Helps when you buy fancy that isn’t going yet). That expensive warmblood was second after dressage a couple weeks ago at BN with super marks (and a 10!), one of the few clean SJ rounds, and I jumped the wrong fence on XC and got the Big E.
Nice horses are nice, but they have to be ridden well. And plenty aren’t! I’m in area 3, but I still see plenty of horses that were bought for reasonable sums and without fancy breeding winning really nice ribbons as a regular occurrence pretty much wherever I go. And they makes me very happy!
Play a long game. Make your goal 3 good rides. Meet great people. Drink beer. Have fun. And stop worrying about ribbons.
Organizers are generally pretty reachable. Maybe not in the week immediately preceding or following their event, but drop them a note and ask!
I would guess they split A/B because the Horse/Rider designations didn’t result in two divisions of relatively even size, but that’s just me spitballing.
Interesting. For me competing against others is really not high on my list of reasons to event. It’s such a crapshoot who else is in your class and how everyone does that I don’t pin any self-worth or satisfaction on placings. I’ve been thrilled with my dressage test only to score in the bottom quarter of the class, and I’ve been near the top after a dressage test that I thought was meh. I’d rather have the former. I’ve also had clean XC or SJ rounds that I’m not proud of and rounds with penalties that felt much more constructive. I usually don’t even pick up ribbons because I already have a big box of them I don’t know what to do with, and they feel pretty irrelevant.
To each his or her own!
What would make you happy? A class of 5 people who are all first timers so its an “even playing field” in your mind and everyone gets a ribbon?
Equestrian sport is not and never will be an equal playing field. What if it starts down pouring before you go XC but was sunny for everyone else? What if the first time eventing horse has shown jumpers and dressage and hunted its whole life? Etc etc…
This is a strange mindset to be honest.
I think it’s impossible for everyone to be happy. Wherever you draw the lines(s), someone is at the bottom.
If you take today’s novice rider, sure, someone at their first novice might feel intimidated competing against a novice AEC winner. But over in the open/horse division, an ammy with years-ago prelim experience might feel intimated competing their OTTB against Olympians on their brand new imports.
You could move the line to put the AEC winner in with the Olympians, or the ammy in with the newbies, but still someone will be unhappy.
I guess ribbons are relatively inexpensive though. If they wanted to just do a big single division and then pin several categories (rider, etc.) that might work?
Lol no! I’m not sure why everyone is so mad about the idea that with enough entrants they can be split green vs not, just like the current rider age divisions (which are pretty meaningless when you think about it - I’ve been beaten by kids so many times…)
It’s not about making me happy or giving everyone a ribbon - we’re not children. It’s applying the exact same idea currently used (splitting divisions) instead of A and B into green and not. Why bother splitting into A and B as they currently do?! So everyone can get a ribbon? 
Why not just lump all the divisions together?
Do you see what I’m saying? They currently split. I’m saying split differently. Same number of ribbons in my area - nobody needs to file chapter 11 over 6 more ribbons! And zero chance of anyone getting so above themselves by winning a BN ribbon that the world ends
Yes I see what you are saying, I stand by my comment earlier that there just are not enough entries for this.
But, again, how do you define “green” in eventing?
In the hunters it is the simple competition height. A first year green can compete in the first years for years. A horse can compete all over the board and still not do the green hunters then come and compete in the greens.
This is why I am confused at to what you intend.
Huh?
It’d be relatively straightforward to take your current A and B and find the median level of competition experience (or placing) and divide in half there. Instead of arbitrarily.
(Use USEA points to divide? Equiratings?)
You’d still have say 30 competitors split into 2 groups 
I think it would be based on area and number of entries. Would be very hard to do across the board in general as many area’s have very low numbers.
Look at the rules. There are several exceptions that allow a first year to compete for two years.
Also, long ago you could sell and rename a horse and send it back into the 1st and 2nd years too. The rules are pretty porous.
Notice, the more you try to work out a solution, the more upfront work will have to be done by somebody who will need to be paid.
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