Don’t know if this has been posted recently…the article seems very timely…even prescient, written 12 yrs ago
https://practicalhorsemanmag.com/tra…-balance-29236
I do like the words, “often in error,but never in doubt”.
So accurate.
I seem to recall awhile back Lucinda Green wrote an article along the same lines too several years ago. Can’t find it now, anyone else remember seeing/reading that?
My take-aways from the article are:
Jumping at speed…it isn’t the speed…it is lack of balance…
The Maryland Hunt Cup is a timber race that covers more than four miles of natural country. Several fences are 4-foot-10, and most of the remaining jumps are over four feet. That is not a misprint… the third and the 13th, and the seventh and the 17th fences are all 4-foot-10 and plumb vertical as well. The horses average more than 800 meters per minute, and most of them jump like working hunters. If you think horses can’t jump well at speed, you need to continue your education. Speed is not the problem; lack of balance is the problem.
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…look up English Grand National on YouTube and watch the race. Like the Hunt Cup, the Grand National is run over four-plus miles at speeds averaging about 800 meters per minute. The Chair and Canal Turn are 5-feet high, and the drop at Becher’s Brook is more than six feet.
On Course Design…the elimination of the steeplechase phase eliminated the chance for the riders and horses to “miss” at a soft fence…and learn from it…so now when riders “miss” at speed, the result is the rotational fall.
The 1948 Olympic Three-Day Event featured a set of 3-foot-11 vertical black gates set 30 feet apart (a perfect half-stride). These gates were the next-to-last efforts, so the rider had to know how to either slow down and “pop” in two very short strides, or accelerate and jump with one huge stride between two very imposing obstacles. And this on a horse who had covered approximately 20 miles by this point.
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While there is not much new in course design, the change in the format in 2004 certainly had an enormous effect on course design, and more importantly on how riders rode the course. When competing in the classic format (with steeplechase), most riders took for granted that they would accrue some time faults and judged their pace accordingly. In addition, because they had just completed a steeplechase phase, their horses had been given an opportunity to “miss” at a soft, forgiving brush fence. This reminded their horses to watch what they did with their footwork and to reawaken their initiative.
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How can we explain this: Riders are riding faster than ever, over courses that are, supposedly, specifically designed to produce “slower and safer riding”–yet falls are increasing in frequency and severity? In my opinion, the answer is simple. The more you make riders slow down to jump complicated, show jumping-like combinations, the faster they will ride somewhere else on the course in order to avoid time faults. The inevitable result of this is that riders are now jumping the plain fences at very high rates of speed. In effect the experts have designed a new sport, where riders steeplechase over solid jumps.
Too much dressage is bad for the event horse because it destroys the horse’s “initiative” for going cross country.
The obstacles we are asking our horses to jump have been successfully jumped for nearly a century. For almost two centuries, racehorses have successfully jumped bigger fences at much higher rates of speed than we require. Our problems are not being caused by the cross-country test; they are being caused by the dressage and show jumping tests.
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… dressage experts, including Reiner Klimke, have mentioned to me that when we truly and correctly collect our horses, we also subdue their initiative. Old time dressage experts used to say that the well trained dressage horse “appeared” to produce the movements of the test by itself. But the movements are in reality a result of the application of our aids, and the horse’s response to those aids. Thus the recent proposal that we require our four-star horses to produce tempi changes at the collected canter fills me with foreboding. More collection, less initiative–less initiative, more falls.
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