Never forget that Touch of Class cross-cantered her way to a gold medal. 
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Cross-cantering doesn’t interfere with the jumps. Best to ignore it and ride forward.
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No objection. Just noting it because otherwise I would have said that he could have placed well in a 3’6" equitation class.
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This is all very good.
However, the officials should have ordered Ms Schleu off the horse before she left the warm-up ring. She was not in an emotional state in which it is safe to ride a horse or to be around other competitors on horses. She needed a timeout worthy of her toddler tantrum.
Honestly, I can’t figure out how or why Annika allowed herself to totally lose her composure. I’ve seen this happen a couple of times before with a French athlete - the silver medalist from Rio - who was pushed into riding too quickly and had some legitimate fear issues. In her case, she should have been eliminated in the warm up because she was a sobbing, scared mess. But she worked very hard over the years and is now usually ok. BTW, she is the kindest person and feels very strongly about the horse welfare issues in the sport.
But a 30-something seasoned competitor in her 3rd Olympics should handle herself better. It would be as unacceptable in any other sport - there’s just no place in sport for such a display of unbridled narcissism.
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Apples and oranges.
The regular show jumpers did not get to fall off and get back on and continue, or continue after two refusals. And the jumps were quite a bit higher.
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Speaking as a total weenie as a rider, we’ve gotten so fixated (understandably) on the horse/horsemanship/rules that, now that I think of it, I’m totally shocked how many of these riders seemed to have no fear as well as minimal skills. Even the German rider seemed to have no concern about the horse going up.
I wasn’t able to see the earlier compilations, and yes, I realize it’s not really fair, given it’s “the worst of the worst” but even in the body language of the riders, it’s surprising to me that they aren’t more afraid.
I agree with @McGurk’s assessment of the London 2012 men’s riding, though. It’s the kind of “rough and ready but not scary” riding I often see in the jumpers at schooling shows with teens who might not have great coaching, but who have willing horses, good balance, and are very athletic (and aren’t overfaced regarding height). I am definitely not in the “take horses out” camp, but I think we’re all in agreement here that there needs to be some major retooling. Riders (in all disciplines) who are actively competing at the top levels are often the worst judges of the risk they’re facing.
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All of the riding disciplines followed the rules of their sport.
It wasn’t all that long ago that riders could remount after a fall. Or even after a fall of horse on XC if it wasn’t connected with a jump.
Rules evolve, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do with pentathlon.
I have yet to meet an active pentathlete who doesn’t want to change the rules. No one likes how it is now. Unfortunately, the people who run the sport and who have excluded others from having a say in it are very slow to accept these changes.
Also, I have never met a pentathlete who thinks of horses as ‘equipment’ as people are saying here. If anyone is guilty of this attitude, it’s the old school coaches who care as little about their athletes as they do about the horses. These coaches are only interested in results and not in anyone’s well-being, horse or human.
And speaking of heavy-handed coaches, does anyone know if the German coach who slapped his female athlete (judo? Taekwondo? Karate?) was sent home in disgrace? Or did that only happen to the German coach who slapped the horse? (Asking because I don’t know.)
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To quote a wise friend of mine: You don’t know what you don’t know.
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No, maybe if you read the entire 948+ post thead and every other post regarding this sport, you’d see what I’d contributed…? Yeah, no one has time for that, so don’t make assumptions.
Like I said, there’s a way to contribute to a discussion without being patronizing. You have a tendency to be downright rude to people, I’m merely trying to restore some civility. Telling off people who suggested the riding portion be eliminated (along with your passive-aggressiveness with my suggestion to be a little nicer) makes you just look like a bully and diminishes your self-described “know-it-all” credibility.
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Fear can manifest as aggression
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Yes, it was a lovely round, and the rider is VERY capable. He obviously saw and rode to distances and absolutely nailed the combinations (the biggest problem in Toyko, IME) while being soft and sympthatic. A very huntery round, other than the cross canter that someone else mentioned.
Considering he had 20 minutes to warm up the horse and jump 6 fences, it’s quite an extraordinary round.
But let’s get real: that round is not a realistic standard for amateur athletes without their own horse who are practicing four other sports. It’s just not. Gustenau could be a professional anywhere in the US. He is either extraordinarily gifted as a rider, OR riding is his first sport and he picked up the other four.
How hard is it for the average American ammy, focused entirely on ONE sport, to be that comfortable and competent at 3’6"? Pretty damn hard, IME, which is why we have the proliferation of 2’6" and 2’9" divisions everywhere. How many average ammies OR pros can get on a strange horse and get it around a 3’6" course after a 20 minute warm up? This old, fat, ex-pro couldn’t! Catch riders with that ability are pretty freakin’ rare.
I get it, it’s the Olympics, it’s supposed to be the best of the best, it’s supposed to be hard, it’s the hard that makes it great. But that goal has run smack into horse welfare and practicality. So how do you preserve the challenge of the sport and protect the horses?
My modest suggestions: Lower the fences to 3’ and make the courses less technical. Hire course designers from the eventing world; the course should be roughly the equivelent of a Novice or Training end of year/championship stadium course. The pool of horses who can jump around a 3’ course and take a joke is much, much larger that those that can do so at 3’6", so this would have the valuable side effect of improving the available horse pool. I do not think that combinations, technical distances or false ground lines have any place in this sport; it’s just not a reasonable expectation for the riders to have that kind of understanding of pace and distance when not getting the saddle time or focusing on one sport. Again, the Austrian rider is an outlier. Fences at 3’ 6"+ triple combinations+ technical distances+casual riders = what we saw in Toyko.
The rider still has to have the basic horsemanship skills to get on a strange horse and pilot it around a course. There will still be plenty of refusals and rails BUT it will be safer for horses and riders. If that strikes someone as too easy, put all the rails in flat cups to really reward accuracy.
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Can someone post a link or a copy of this for those of us who are not instagram members?
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I have to admit, I’m coming to see JER’s point. Basically that making this phase easier addresses the concern from a short term point, but not in the long term. Over the long term, the standard of riding will simply fall further since it’s now easier to survive.
To that point, while it may also make sense to reduce the difficulty of the riding phase, the more important thing is to a) increase the weight on the riding part of the competition and b) run it under rules that eliminate the rider after a fall or two stops.
Pentathletes only have 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week to train and recover. It makes sense that they allocate those hours in a way that maximizes their performance over all 5 sports. So increase the importance of the riding phase (and the consequences for not riding well), which in turn will force them to reallocate their training to place a greater weight on riding.
Can you imagine how much higher the quality of riding would be if pentathlon was scored by treating all clear equestrian rounds as ties to be broken by performance in the other four sports, with all rounds with 1 rail down placed behind?
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After posting the above, I thought some more about some of JER’s and some other comments above, and wondered if a basic competency test could be introduced for the riders, sort of a qualifying round. JER’s story of the rider who clearly had NO riding experience and was going to go into the ring, crash around and fall, take the penalties and advance to the next phase is pretty horrific.
What if a rider that can’t demonstrate basic proficiency doesn’t get to compete in the riding portion or gets eliminated?
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I’m not sure I’m advocating making the phase easier, per se. Just less punitive for the horses. If the fences are lower, but the rails are in flat cups, is that actually easier? Or, you could make the course more difficult in terms of turns and requiring an accurate track, but include ground lines. Put the combinations back in if you want, but leave them at a standard distance. Add a liverpool for the spookiness factor.
Does that not meet the requirements of easier on the horses, still difficult for the riders and improving the availability of horses?
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But the rider was German. Everybody knows that Germans are perfect riders of horses.
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I like the idea, but only when combined with greater emphasis on the phase. I also worry that adding in some of the challenges that you list (flat cups, liverpools) might might not help as much as we’d like. Flat cups increase the importance of having a careful horse - something that is not within the athlete’s control. And I would think it’s about as hard to find a horse that will happily jump a 3 foot liverpool as one that will jump 3’6".
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You can view instagram accounts in a web browser without signing in.
Go to google and look for jersporthorse. It will come up first in the results.
Increased emphasis on the phase WOULD make the competitors focus more training time on the phase. That may be the most direct route to improving the riding skills of the competitors.
But I still think that changes need to be made to the courses and course design for horse welfare reasons. If you had a horse that was sound and could pack anyone around at 3’ 6", would you lend it to pentathlon? No, of course not. (Obviously, JER is the exception since she’s involved in the sport.) If you leased that rare and lovely horse, you’d lease it for some big yearly fee to someone to compete in the AO jumpers. Lower the fences, increase the pool of horses, make the test more of a test of rider’s rather than horse’s ability.
I’m agnostic on the Liverpool issue. Most horses jumping around at 3’ 6" have seen Liverpools, most jumping around at 3’ have not. But my point remains that MP needs to find a way to test RIDER’S horsemanship, separate from the horse’s ability and good will.
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I know this question has been answered somewhere on this thread, but…
Did the rules allow her to request a different horse after how Saint Boy’s first rider did by him? Would there have been a penalty for doing so?
(I am inclined to think that one ride per horse would be a better idea. Or “mandatory retirement” from that competition for a horse whose rider falls off a certain number of times, and/or drops a certain number of rails and/or refuses.)
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