Live Stream of Wellington Young Rider Clinic January 4-7

[anon56064099]

Well - one obvious counterpoint here is that perhaps not all riders should be forced to ride at the level of the lowest performer? I also think a lot of folks use their own experiences (fairly or not) to inform their understanding of new experiences. The fences were VERY low in the clip as an aside. Also, no idea what the expectation is from USET - I would assume they were paying the clinician? Like what happens if the clinician just dismisses the riders and says - this is over? Not saying it would be the wrong move, just not sure how that would play out genuinely.

[CBoylen]

And to be clear, I took the run it into the wall and flip it over remarks as commentary on the rider’s commitment to following directions, not the amount of force Katie would have to apply to it were she on the horse. The way I heard it was “these are the things that would be more likely to happen before I would dare to give up and canter through a turn when someone coaching me told me to stop straight”. Basically, “I would rather die than make this mistake”, which of course no one would take literally.

[anon56064099]

I took it the same way - using exaggeration with a VERY timid rider to create a mental picture that was so extreme, perhaps the rider would actually sit the horse back and down once and be done with it. I always find a strong and decisive correction to be much kinder for a horse than constant, timid nagging or a feeling of ‘oh no, the human on me has no idea what they’re doing’.

[SillyHorse]

I didn’t hear much teaching, just barking orders and getting pissed off if a rider couldn’t make it happen. Not much teaching at all.

[TXnGA]

@KellyS

@CBoylen

What’s actually going to happen here is the clinics will not be broadcast for our use anymore, or no one worth listening to will teach them. And that’s a shame. If you actually watched the clinic, it was hugely helpful, and you can see where the corrections were necessary. Exercises are not optional, there is no “try”. Getting it done is first priority, and then things get easier and better. Very few of the first group came out with this understanding, but the second group sure did. Also, they had to learn to use the stick. They literally didn’t know how. Even the last day, they still had it in the wrong hand, or were using it on the neck, or dropped it (accidentally or on purpose, not sure which is worse) on the way to the line they had to chase at the first round.
It’s actually not supposed to be about it being fun at this point. That’s for amateurs. These are the people we are training to ride 7 figure investments, on a team funded by your money. It’s about results.

So the best comeback is to say, “Well, shame on you for caring. Now we will lose some videos”? Because that is the highest priority?

This is exactly what is wrong with the sport. When those in it think it’s okay for someone to teach this way and then try to make those calling it out the bad guys.

No matter the cost, ambition, or level, no one should be treated poorly. Is your support for an archaic system of riding and training really the hill you want to die on?

Perhaps, just perhaps, our teams could be MORE successful if we didn’t consider this “god-like” coaching the best way to do things.

Maybe, just maybe, if we treated people professionally, as well as the horses, they may perform better.

If this group of riders is supposed to represent to best of our up-and-comers but then fail so badly in a training session, maybe the problem isn’t the riders or horses but the system and people who think it’s okay for an international US coach to call young adults “bird brains” and tell them to “flip” horses and give them a good “licking”.

But hey, the pros aren’t electrocuting horses for insurance money or raping young adults anymore, so it’s all good. This is nothing. These riders should be grateful to be bullied and embarrassed because they can’t ride their way out of a paper bag. And the horses, well, they get to be privileged show horses and maybe go to the Olympics. /s (Yes, I’m being sarcastic.)

It’s 2024, time for a bunch of people to join the real world where this type of behavior from anyone is not tolerated. As a few have pointed out, if someone can say this on video in public, what the heck is going on behind closed doors.

Or maybe you need to join the real world. Where life is tough and not all sunshine and rainbows. We have raised a the younger generation to be soft. There is no such thing as everyone is a winner. Not everyone wins first place- you don’t get to be successful just because . To not be able to understand that not everything goes your way or you don’t get to be a Starbucks barista and expect to make the same salary as a medical doctor. It’s insanity. When you are riding a horse, shit goes wrong fast and if you don’t know what to do when shit goes wrong, than that’s on the trainers.

[steelerino]

@Renn_aissance

Did Beezie use the same language, tone, and teaching style as Katie?

There was a horse who was rooting the kid out of the tack when she tried to halt and Beezie came up and grabbed both reins and was jerking his teeth out as he was walking over top of her. Surprisingly that clip is nowhere to be found

[skydy]

@steelerino

@Renn_aissance

Did Beezie use the same language, tone, and teaching style as Katie?

There was a horse who was rooting the kid out of the tack when she tried to halt and Beezie came up and grabbed both reins and was jerking his teeth out as he was walking over top of her. Surprisingly that clip is nowhere to be found

The horse was swinging its head into Beezie and was completely disrespecting her space. She was protecting herself and I don’t blame her. She pulled down on the bridle, not back on the bit. She also smacked it on the cheek with an open hand, then it finally stopped being a bully.

Was she supposed to let the horse knock her down while she was trying to help the rider, who was still mounted on the horse and was apparently not able to control their horse?

Beezie also had to ask people to please stop chatting and listen. It was remarkable to me, since the “chatters” were so loud that you could hear them when they had no microphones. Their chatting must have been very loud in person to be heard on the video.

[steelerino]

Now we pick and chose which disobedience we discipline and how. Got it.

[HipNo34]

@risuenaVT

and the second of Prudent’s sessions on CMH/USEF Network. Prudent’s first session is currently unavailable due to ‘technical difficulties’ or similar.

I just watched all of session one. As I commented earlier, the video is available despite the red message about the video being flawed. Click, tap, or press Play on the video.

I don’t know if it was stealth-edited but I let it run the whole way through, after the first session was over and most of the riders had left the ring. I DID NOT hear the animal rights activists / “need a licking” comments highlighted in the Albert Voorn Facebook post that people are currently losing their collective @#$% over. And I somehow missed the part about running a horse into the wall, too.

Can somebody please direct me to the posts with time stamps? If there any upstream?

Seeing the whole video in one sitting made me embarrassed that I commented before watching it in its entirety – even though I stand by everything I said. I jumped in and hit my keyboard, too, so have no room to throw stones.

I can’t speak to Katie Prudent’s career as a teacher and clinician on the whole but based on this session? The one hour and 30-odd minute video I did see? JesusH.

I am a world-class chickens’t ammy and was a world class chickens’t junior. I cried at the drop of a hat then and I still do now. I’m four years back as a returning rider and still tapping out at 18". I love many of the ways in which horsemanship and “humanship” have evolved. I love that we’re demanding civility and respect (even if wider American society isn’t).

But, JesusHFreakingCrackers. If the video I saw is what qualifies as brutal coaching, if a truly split-second throwaway line about being a bunch of birdbrains qualifies as verbal abuse and “hurling insults,” than we are truly f’ing lost as a people.

ETA: I am actually looking forward to going back and listening more closely to it for what Katie is saying, not just how she is saying it… or looking for the gotcha moments. Many of us who did see the whole thing seem to have gotten different things from it. Someone mentions upthread that there wasn’t a whole lot of teaching, more “just barking orders.” I got a different read on it.

I’m just going to figure that most of the angry mob has either A. not seen the whole session or B. Has only seen the less-than-three-minutes of edited video or, C. some combination of the above.

I stupidly replied to a comment on the USEF Network FB post, that was asking for a link to the edited clip video. All I did was recommend people watch the whole clinic, if they had access as members, and I provided a link to the CMH/USEF Network video.

Congratulate me. I’m now earning record vanity metrics thanks to a flood of replies that are all a variant of “these comments are unacceptable in ANY CONTEXT ”

(um, I didn’t comment one way or the other as to the comments being “acceptable” so … flying monkeys, I guess)

If the session I did watch was edited, and those comments about running into walls and needing a good licking were removed, I’m going to hazard a guess that they too were drops in the bucket that was a whole 90+ minute clinic. And in that case, they certainly are worth discussing but in no way merit that absolute, apocalyptic internet sh*tshow going on. It’s a wildly disproportionate response driven by a hatchet job of a video. What is that guy’s damage?

It is my sincere hope that USEF, USEF Network and CMH make this video available to non-members and non-subscribers because honest to god. throws hands in air

[skydy]

@steelerino

Now we pick and chose which disobedience we discipline and how. Got it.

Definitely. A horse that has no respect for a human on the ground is very dangerous.

Beezie did not have access to this horse, other than in that moment. There was no time for her to train the horse not to do this in the first place.

[Midge]

@Limerick

You know what bothers me almost as much as the “I’d be flipping them” comment. The fact she could not offer solutions to getting a horse to stop beyond turning it into the fence. And you can say well that is what is necessary if a horse is taking off on you. As a clinician, it was her role to take that horse/rider several steps back, check the rider’s hands, check how they are using their seat, check the bit, etc and do some simpler exercises that encourage a softer, responsive horse.

Did you watch the whole video? I haven’t so I don’t know that she didn’t offer a different way, that she didn’t start with even more basic exercises, and that she didn’t mete out a bunch of praise as well. What we have is two minutes chopped out of how long? Was that a two minute example of 60? 90? minutes of insults and invective or was it the only two minutes? And honestly, I don’t get the problem with a lot of what she said. She was gruff, but not demeaning. She said you either don’t listen or you’re are bird brains. I mean, I am watching her say, “Go left, go left” and the kid pulls up.

And did the kids have as good of, better, or worse results?

What I did hear from someone else is the kids in the second group with Katie were exponentially better because they applied what they learned from watching the first group. So paying attention and following directions worked with the very same clinician.

[HipNo34]

@anon56064099

If anything, she was trying to keep the rider safe.

She actually says this around the 47 or 48-minute mark, if I am reading my notes properly. She said “For the parents out there, I’m hard on them because I want them to be in control … this is a dangerous sport…”

[HipNo34]

@risuenaVT

I watched Prudent’s sessions last weekend and I definitely noted and disliked the ‘some horse need a licking’ and ‘I’d flip my horse over’ comments.

Oh, oh, oh – so either I missed them in the on-demand video currently available or they were edited out.

[MHM]

@HipNo34

Can somebody please direct me to the posts with time stamps?

I don’t have time stamps, but I almost feel like maybe that happened in the second section. That’s the only one I’ve watched so far, and I sort of think I remember hearing at least some of those during the live stream.

[anon56064099]

Yeah - makes sense, thanks for sharing that. I’ve ridden many disciplines and haven’t watched the full video but was surprised to see the response to the clip. Again - don’t know this clinician other than through her reputation for high performance so can’t speak to it. But I certainly don’t assume that everyone is a raging horse abuser who quite literally flips horses who won’t stop, killing them along the way. If she is, and of course we all know bad characters exist, I would never condone this type of behavior or abuse. I just assumed it was very normal ‘get tough and ride!’ speech. But maybe I just have incredibly thick skin - I was an eventer and in that sport, especially years ago, riders and horses die. Instructors are direct and safety-oriented for that reason.

[Limerick]

TXnGA, do you have any personal experience with a kid in the 14-college age range? I ask because of your “not everyone gets a trophy” comment.”

[HipNo34]

Thanks! I was wondering if it was maybe in the second.

[Midge]

The mother of one of the participants just posted a video of her daughter, talking about how great the clinic was. The clip was from Katie’s section. Her daughter does the exercise and Katie says, “Oh good. This girl’s got a beautiful feel. Stop on the line. Excellent.”

I wonder why that section didn’t make it into Mr. Voorn’s two minutes?

[HipNo34]

I still haven’t personally seen the “flip a horse” part so I can’t, shouldn’t speak to it.

I’ll guess anyway, after seeing all of part 1, I don’t believe she would put a horse or rider in danger. I don’t believe she was endorsing hauling off on horse or abusive use of the stick. In part 1, she spoke very specifically to matters of safety and horse welfare.

I find the wholesale dismissal of context and nuance, “0 to Torches and Pitchforks” in under three minutes kind of terrifying. Moreso when it’s based on a sketchy video. Speaking of, from an IP standpoint, was that video violating anyone’s TOS in anyway?

As I posted elsewhere, I’m looking forward to watching the whole session again for the sake of watching it as a clinic, not an internet outrage.

You know how when you’re trying to get something new or fix a problem and it happens in bits and spurts?

There was a huge bay horse, difficult and evasive, whose rider Katie kept telling “no hands!” through the grid. You could see it slowly starting to click for the rider and how the horse would jump when she was getting it. When she touched his face, his head would come up and he’d kind of pogo over the vertical. When she didn’t, different story. It was cool to watch and an absolute shame all that’s getting lost in the shuffle.

[risuenaVT]

I’ve been rewatching the first session and I’m halfway through and I think it must have been edited, because I’m pretty sure the animal rights/horses need a licking comment happened fairly early, like first 30 minutes.

And looking at the fence heights in the fb clip, versus what I’m seeing at 50 minutes in for the first session, yeah the clips have been edited out (Carlee, Luke, and Ansley were in the first session, as was Emmy with the big difficult bay with the white nose, and at least one of them is in almost all the clips on fb - Luke’s easy to note because he’s the only guy of the 11 total riders).