Modern Pentathlon

[Doodlebug1]

[QUOTE=shadytrake;6494433]
What is the conformation term for swinging the legs under instead of snapping the knees up? There are a few horses that do that which I would have thought would not be desirable as a pick for the riding string.

Not picking on the horses just noticing some bad form in the horses too.[/QUOTE]

If you get the horses on such a bad stride so close to the jump, the horse has two choices:

1. snap the knees up into the jump sending the poles upwards and hurting their kneeds
2. barge it with their chests and sort the legs out after.

Maybe you’re too busy microblogging several hours too late to actually watch the proximity of horse to fence.

[shadytrake]

The chestnut gelding ridden by the Australian was nice. I liked him. She wasn’t a bad rider either. A little handsy but gave the horse a pat. He was #11.

#9 the paint has a nice belly. he looks like he got tired. Sabrina from Italy had a nice hand. A little tight. If she had let him go forward, he would have had a nicer rhythm.

[shadytrake]

[QUOTE=Doodlebug1;6494448]
If you get the horses on such a bad stride so close to the jump, the horse has two choices:

1. snap the knees up into the jump sending the poles upwards and hurting their kneeds
2. barge it with their chests and sort the legs out after.

Maybe you’re too busy microblogging several hours too late to actually watch the proximity of horse to fence.[/QUOTE]

No. I know the difference between getting deep, leaving long, and swinging under. I didn’t say every horse. I said a few.

I’m not ignorant, thank you. I compete A/A and Ad Eq. Feel free to critique my form on my FB page. My name is Melissa Garner and I’m in Memphis, TN. I’m not an armchair rider and I don’t hide behind my online screen name.

[shadytrake]

[QUOTE=Big Day;6494430]
My father was a member of the Royal Swedish Navy and was also one of their top swimmers. I guess because it was the Navy, they wanted him to train for Olympics in the MP.
His experience riding was minimal. They gave him a 6-month crash (no pun intended) course in riding but never gave him stirrups! Since he wasn’t well schooled in the finer details of riding he assumed that was normal. Anyway, he became a rider and was adept at fencing and shooting. However, he was an epic failure at running and as a result did not make the team. It made for fun stories around the dinner table though! But most importantly, the experience made him a horse lover.

I guess my take-away from watching the MP is that the athletes who treated their horses as vehicles and not highly trained and sensitive animals received the results they deserved.[/QUOTE]

Practicing w/o the irons is a great way to work on the leg and core. I do that sometimes but have to admit haven’t done enough of that lately.

Glad it made him a horse lover.

[jlphilli]

I’ve been watching this for awhile today. HOW is this still in the olympics?? Some of these are just terrible and IMO not safe for the horse and rider (ex: the Koren guy who flipped his horse). Not to mention the Russian girl who starts of swinging her legs kicking like crazy to the first jump…not soon after her horse just stops moving…literally. Yet they let her smack her horse with the crop and attempt to keep going. !!!

[shadytrake]

That brown vertical is a bugger. I would have a hard time with it too. My guy bulges the left shoulder so that I have to counter bend and left leg like crazy to keep him straight.

[shadytrake]

[QUOTE=jlphilli;6494527]
I’ve been watching this for awhile today. HOW is this still in the olympics?? Some of these are just terrible and IMO not safe for the horse and rider (ex: the Koren guy who flipped his horse). Not to mention the Russian girl who starts of swinging her legs kicking like crazy to the first jump…not soon after her horse just stops moving…literally. Yet they let her smack her horse with the crop and attempt to keep going. !!![/QUOTE]

Yeah. That horse had had enough. The yeehaw legs didn’t help at all.

[JER]

[QUOTE=shadytrake;6494540]
That brown vertical is a bugger. I would have a hard time with it too. My guy bulges the left shoulder so that I have to counter bend and left leg like crazy to keep him straight.[/QUOTE]

Now imagine if you’d never met your horse before and didn’t know this about him – and 20 minutes later, you had to go jump a 1.20 course.

That’s pentathlon riding.

Honestly, the standard is decent overall. I don’t get some of the OMG! criticism, I think it’s a bit unfair.

[MHM]

^ Not to mention a stadium full of spectators. Those horses probably don’t see a crowd like that every day.

[shadytrake]

[QUOTE=JER;6494553]
Now imagine if you’d never met your horse before and didn’t know this about him – and 20 minutes later, you had to go jump a 1.20 course.

That’s pentathlon riding.

Honestly, the standard is decent overall. I don’t get some of the OMG! criticism, I think it’s a bit unfair.[/QUOTE]

I think I’ve given fair comments. I stopped posting because I didn’t want any more ugly comments (not directed at you-btw) from the blogger police.

One Canadian rider was lovely. I had to rewind to get her name. Melanie McCann I think. I also liked her horse.

[vineyridge]

Back in the days when the US pentathlon team came from the Army, I’ve read that they sent potential members who couldn’t ride over to the cavalry school, where they got trained for several months. Learned with no stirrups and no reins for several weeks. Then no stirrups for several weeks more. I think that may have been the standard cavalry way to teach riding to new recruits.

It was considered the most efficient way to teach quickly.

[jlphilli]

[QUOTE=JER;6494553]
Now imagine if you’d never met your horse before and didn’t know this about him – and 20 minutes later, you had to go jump a 1.20 course.

That’s pentathlon riding.

Honestly, the standard is decent overall. I don’t get some of the OMG! criticism, I think it’s a bit unfair.[/QUOTE]

I feel like if they want to continue having this sport, they need to really train people in the riding that they will be competing. If they don’t want to do that, then they need to have some other form of testing their riding skills rather than shoving them in the ring and galloping wildly around a 1.20m course. It’s really not fair to the horses. Did you see the one French girl who sat back over every jump yanking her horse in the face?

[JER]

[QUOTE=shadytrake;6494574]

One Canadian rider was lovely. I had to rewind to get her name. Melanie McCann I think. I also liked her horse.[/QUOTE]

Melanie had a great ride.

Melanie is the one girl on Canada’s national team that didn’t start out in Pony Club. She’s only been riding for about 4-5 years, and she started riding specifically for pentathlon.

It hasn’t been easy for her. She’s had a terrible time with nerves and fear, but she’s worked really hard on her riding (and on her nerves) so that she’s now very consistent in her riding scores.

Our other Canadian Olympian, Donna, is the better rider of the two in terms of knowledge, experience and feel. But today, she drew a horse that wasn’t an easy ride at all.

The same thing happened to defending Olympic champion Lene Schoneborn. She’s won just about everything there is in the sport, has years of experience, is a skilled and well-trained rider. But today, she had a stop at fence 1 and a number of rails.

[shadytrake]

The Irish rider was very good. Her triple was great. Nice releases.

Irena (sp?) from UKR had the best approach to that brown vertical & good horse at the end to listen to her leg.

[shadytrake]

[QUOTE=JER;6494590]
The same thing happened to defending Olympic champion Lene Schoneborn. She’s won just about everything there is in the sport, has years of experience, is a skilled and well-trained rider. But today, she had a stop at fence 1 and a number of rails.[/QUOTE]

I agree she drew a tough ride, but I think she did the best she could with it. I didn’t feel that her riding skills were lacking. I was trying to think who rode that horse earlier but it escapes me.

The rider after her from Czech was so so IMO.

The Chinese rider is riding one of the greys that I like and she had a good round even with the 2 rails. I’d like to ride that grey.

The Egyptian rider rode the other grey that I like. I wish she wouldn’t pop him in the mouth so much. You can really see it with the white gloves. A decent round though.

[shadytrake]

Congrats to Lithuania, Great Britain, and Brazil.

USA in fourth.

Now I can unistall Expat Shield so my laptop will connect to work server correctly. priorities.

[Duramax]

[QUOTE=LetsGoXC;6493331]
Don’t flood the poor man with emails, but from my research, it appears that this individual is the Riding Coach for the US Team:
http://www.eqcntrintl.com/about_us_home.html[/QUOTE]

Michael Cintas is no longer the US coach, Richard Lamb is.

[hastyreply]

Here and else where I hear a lot of "Why do we even still have this "? I think it’s an interesting combination of skills to train for. I don think there isn’t enough emphasis on training for the riding portion. I realize that most of these people do other things and don’t train for this full time and the other aspects are easier to squeeze in around a busy schedule. I think more “boot camps” for riding need to be given like the military did. The women seemed to be weak in the legs, just hanging on to their mouths for all they were worth, not realizing they could control speed with their seat and legs. The men were heavy on the legs. I don’t remember which horse was just switching leads back and forth because the rider was jabbing him with his spurs. They were heavy on the mouths too but they were also jamming them forward with their legs, (hence the horse who flipped).

I thought the horses were really nice and kudos to those who lent them to the competition. Some of them were all out saints. I loved the horse who finished the triple -“cuz that’s what your suppose to do or you have to jump the whole damn thing over”- with the rider hanging from his neck - rider who had the presence of mind to get her feet up so they wouldn’t knock the fence down. LOL There were many others too who gave their all.

[shadytrake]

I agree with you hasty for the most part. I do think that some of the ladies rode well. I thought all of the horses were good and several were really great!

I really wasn’t too impressed with the men, but I’m just so embarrassed by our rider who was clearly in the bottom in skill (if you want to call his riding a skill at all). He was just pathetic.

As most of us know, riding is expensive so I’m sure that the $ plays into the picture big time.

Maybe if our colleges would add MP to the NCAA sports…we could get the college team riders.

[PNWjumper]

[QUOTE=shadytrake;6494352]
The Abbey Road oxer is 1.2 Meter. I counted the cup holders (can’t for the life of me remember what those are called). Anyway, the back rail of the oxer is 17 holes. I believe each one represents 3"? So that makes 51" or 1.29 meter? Someone check my math.[/QUOTE]

I haven’t watched the replays, but if they’re using standard show jumping jumps, each hole represents 2", not 3.