So my barn mate JJ’d for an FEI division at an event here in October and they did require her to video on her own phone. I was surprised because I had never heard of this before, so maybe it’s new? She was also at the coffin complex so maybe they only had JJ video at tricky combinations, im not sure.
I don’t have much to say about this thread in general - honestly, it falls under “shit happens” for me. The eventing gods giveth and the eventing gods taketh away.
Fun story: I have self-reported a missed error at an event, and in that instance the secretary told me not to worry about it. I won that event (I was also 11 years old competing at the lowest level available at the time, and no I will not fess up what calendar year that was in but suffice it to say it sure wasn’t last year. And for the record my trainer at the time advised me not to report it at all, but tiny Marigold would have lost sleep for weeks - I still don’t like looking at that ribbon when I come across it in the back corner of my basement. Then again, I’m not sure I’ve won an event since, so justice was ultimately served).
While I’m certainly not recommending this as an official rule change or mandatory practice, this makes me wonder if I was an organizer if I might see if I could drum up a collection of donated old cell phones. We are now in the era where some people have two or three old smartphones collecting dust at the back of a drawer. Clear the memories, charge them before each event, use a labelmaker to mark the jumps they’ll film, and send them out on course with the jump judges. No need for a connection because you’ll get the phone itself back. You wouldn’t even need to check them unless there was a suspected problem. If no inquiries by the time of the next event, wipe them and repeat.
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Frankly, having a cheap trail camera type thing mounted on a little tripod at each fence would completely absolve everyone of the need for hordes of volunteers sitting out on course. The cameras could feed to two or three volunteers in front of a screen elsewhere. Each volunteer follows a competitor on course end to end, and scores as they go. Again, just an idea. Might not work.
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In the Land of Ponies, the majority of Events these days have commercial companies recording everyone, fence by fence. There are digital cameras on tripods all around the course. This does make questions about did-or-did-not much easier to decide. It also does away with the FEI asking Volunteers to record their fence on their own tech. That requirement only lasted for a season or so, when the flag rule was first introduced.
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I’ve been saying, we need to adopt the UK style of event videography for a long time now. They’re also producing much more inexpensive videos, and much more quickly than the events around me.
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When I have seen things being videoed at the higher levels it has typically been a person whose only job is to video at that location and are provided with the equipment to do the recording. Not standing there with their personal cell phone.
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Yes, but people who are thinking this idea is great might not realize that the volunteers might have limitations (wrong phone, no battery, no storage, not able to video and watch) unless others like us say something, so we are saying something since it was brought up here as an idea, it is being brought up here that there might be issues with it.
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Or enough of sizes that work for the volunteers.
Nothing like telling a volunteer who is going to be standing out in the weather all day for you that they should have driven the over an hour to your venue the day before if they wanted a T-shirt in the size they requested when asked what size they wanted ahead of time. (What is the point of asking ahead what size people want if you shirts are not going to be set aside for people?)
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Just curious, did they tell her ahead of time that she would be doing this so she could bring tools to charge her phone and maybe some external storage or something if her phone does not have the capacity for all day recording?
I know she knew ahead of time because she told me prior to her having to go out and JJ, but I do not know if they gave her any tools for phone charging, etc. I can ask, though!
While I do like the idea of having video reference, I know for sure my phone wouldn’t have the storage for it. I’m CONSTANTLY having to delete stuff on my phone so I have storage. I think right now I have almost 2k videos on the phone…99% of my horse, that I will not be deleting, of course lol
Look up e.g. 'Equireel’or ‘An Eventful Life’ on Facebook etc and waste a few hours following individual riders around many different courses in the UK, Ireland and Australia.
ETA The videos cost about £60 and are available within a few hours, often the same day.
You would still need volunteers on course at every fence to do things like stop horses, assist in case of falls, fix flags and footing, keep pedestrians out of the way etc. So I don’t think this would be an instead of, just an in addition to.
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Personal video has been submitted before and has been denied as useable by the TD. Unless they specifically request a certain fence be recorded, as did happen once to me when I was JJ.
EV115.3 has the time limits for Inquiries/Protests.
For “Incidents during the Event or scoring” (except mathematical or transcription errors) the time limit is 30 minutes after the results of the relevant results are posted.
For “Mathematical or transcription errors” the time limit is 3PM the day following the last day of the Event.
Yes at a different show last August, JJ said someone had a stop but the horse did not step backwards, just hesitated. The TD would not look at personal video. The rider’s daughter had videoed her round.
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I think I remember two cases where errors were found days after the completion of the Event, and USEA said they would not change the official results
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I’ve been wondering about this for timing purposes for a while because twice in the last year my time has been wrong by a minute. A minute! Once was a minute slow and once was a minute fast, and neither was remotely plausible. I noticed and inquired within the time limit, and both times it was corrected so I assume it was a transcription error. I really didn’t have any proof though so this made me wonder if there’s a way to track one’s own time that would be accepted in the event of a discrepancy.
That’s rough! I too am interested to know if there is an officially accepted timer one can use to dispute times.
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I did this in 2019 at Foshay (New Brunswick). I believe it was the first year that the FEI rule came out about videoing corners and skinnies to ensure the horse was clear (and it was optional).
I used my own phone, and the TD helped determine the place I should stand to capture the correct angle for my fence. I was not jump judging - just doing the video. I also didn’t know in advance that I was doing this, because I signed up to scribe dressage but told then I’d be there on XC day if they needed me as well.
The videos weren’t uploaded anywhere or sent to anyone - they were taken in the case that there was a close call, so that the TD (maybe it’s the Ground Jury?) could check to see if the rider really was clear over the fence. We did need it once. I don’t have a data plan on my personal phone so I couldn’t send it that way - I had to text it to the TD, who then sent it out. They also watched the original on my phone (texting kills video quality) to be sure. It was helpful because the rider was clear at that fence.
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We time every horse over our fence. Fence one acts as a back-up to the start, the last fence habitually also reports when a horse has gone through the finish. I can’t recall any complaints about time for many, many seasons.
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