New National MERs

[beowulf]

I read the new MERs and decided to think about them for a while.

I do think the 6 is much better than 10. 10 was unfeasible. It is already so cost prohibitive to go to an event, much less 10 of them for your MERs… Granted I think when you get to that level, maybe the poorer ammy folk have already been weeded out, so cost is not a concern. Poor people are not competing Training level. And they’re definitely not competing Prelim or above.

I do not like the dressage score requirement being changed to 45. There is no correlation between lower penalty/dressage score and safer XC. None.

But there is a correlation between lower dressage scores and horse falls. That is scary. And I can think of so, so, so many combinations that lay down a beautiful test (hello? Kitty??? Loughan Glen?? Z??) that are (or were) absolutely objectively dangerous XC.

I would rather see a metric that measures their safety in former XC runs over the span of their career versus their single-day’s dressage score. I can think of lots of reasons a good safe horse could score a 45 on a bad day… It is not that hard to do as the levels go up. Especially not with the newer coefficients in more complicated movements in dressage.

[subk]

@Jealoushe

Good dressage translates to good jumping. It’s not like you need to drill 5 days a week to do a Training level/first level test! That’s the most basic level and everyone should be able to complete that in decent form if they are Eventing Training level or above.

Anyone that is telling you need good dressage to jump well and safely is uninformed. As eventers we say this and hear this all the time from people who should know better because it is simply wrong.

A few years ago I went to audit a USHJA Emerging Athlete Training Session for young jumper riders. The instructors were Linda Allen and Melanie Smith Taylor–both of these women are icons in the show jumping world. Melanie and Olympic Gold Medalists and Linda an Olympic course designer.

The clinic started with a “flat” session in the morning with the kids being asked to come down to the arena in a snaffle–some of them had to borrow bits. After a free warm up the instructions were to ride their horses in a dressage frame and create a hand to mouth connection. Then to ride down the long side leaving the straight away at a flag pole, making a 20 meter circle and returning to the long side at the same flag pole. That was just for starters.

These were top junior/young riders competing at 1.0,m and higher. They could not ride dressage well enough to ride out of a paper bag. Of about 20 of them (in two sessions) only 1 of them had a solid understanding of what was being asked and maybe another 2 kind of got it. Only one of them was able to ride in what would be considered “decent form” for training level dressage. The rest of them sucked.

I was very, very skeptical about how in the world these kids were going to come out and ride 1.0m course. They couldn’t ride a 20 meter circle; their horses were not connected in any way we would consider that term; most of them couldn’t even bend for crying out loud. It was going to be a shitshow!

The afternoon session came. These kids as a group could ride 3 strides in front of the fence, over the fence and three strides away as well as any young riders I’ve ever seen. They blew event kids out of the water, and were as good as most of the eventing professionals I typically see. They were phenomenal. Yes, our eventing kids are better between fences, but they couldn’t touch these kids before the fence. Yes, they could have improved having a rail here or there with better bending and balancing coming out of a turn, but that would be fine tuning–not improving whether these kids were competent and safe.

Some show jumpers at the top levels do some dressage. It is rare for a hunter to do dressage, yet go watch a 4 foot Hunter Classic and get back to me about competence. You think those steeplechase horses running around the Grand National are doing dressage every other Monday?

Dressage competence is completely and totally unnecessary for jumping competence and we are the only equestrian sport that insists the two must be linked.

[ltmac]

I can understand why my wording may have led you to think that, so apologies for that. In my defense, I did mention in my post how we improved at home and our test scores did too; we started with what we had and worked to improve. Also, my trainer called any speed faults a speeding ticket, even if you were even one second too fast, so I was just trying to provide a bit of levity here

Without getting too bogged down with my/our details, what I was trying to get at is that my mare didn’t score well in dressage so by simply looking at the numerical score told one story but in person, it was another story. No one ever filed grievances with me, my parents, or my trainers regarding our safety at competitions nor did any one of the many clinicians we worked with over the years ever mention it. I can’t tell you how many of these big name upper level riders always told me at clinics or trainings that their first Kentucky horse was similar to my mare. Looking back over her record reminded me that, ironically, the highest placing we ever had was second and we finished on our dressage score of a 44 at our first Prelim

Coin flip: I’ve seen plenty of double clear cross country and show jumping rounds that were out of control and dangerous. It’s like the old expression goes: you can’t judge a game by the scorecard. However, I can understand why these additional layers are being added to Swiss cheese model of eventing safety.

ETA: additional thoughts.

[TLD5737]

While I totally get what you’re saying, I’m thinking maybe the comment about preventing people from moving up is more of a monetary comment or the ability to travel as much as someone who is not an AA.

[Jealoushe]

Well that isn’t what I said though. I said good dressage leads to good jumping. Not that good dressage was a requirement for jumping.

Our sport includes DRESSAGE.

Why be good at two parts only as someone above mentioned?

If you routinely had horrible jumping scores and good dressage would you still be ok with upgrading?

It’s a three phase sport and riders should be prolific in all three phases. One is not more important than the other.

But again that’s just my opinion. As I said we can agree to disagree because we just aren’t going to agree on this one.

[subk]

The rule requiring minimum dressage score is being sold to you based on safety. Not some pretty vision on what a few people think the sport should look like.

There are a TON of reasons to ride a horse that is good in only 2 of 3 phases–the least of it being that most horses are only really good in 1 or 2 phases and not all 3. Also, it has been common to buy young and upcoming riders XC masters and tell them to suck it up when they looked at their dressage score. Why? Because those horses developed kids and amateurs into really good XC riders while putting them at minimum risk. These horse are not as unusual as you might think–and it is bad for the sport to push them out.

Of course I would not be fine with moving up with bad jumping and good dressage. When was the last time you saw someone get seriously hurt in dressage? I thought the discussion was about safety…

And yes XC is more important that the other phases. That’s how the scoring is set up. While yes, there has been more scoring emphasis on dressage over time it is still a sport that requires significantly more competence at XC than dressage for higher placing. And it is still a sport that someone in the bottom third after dressage can win a nice ribbon.

[beowulf]

Thinking a bit more about this… there is a difference between a 45 in BN and a 45 at Modified. A 45 at Modified is probably a lot easier to earn than at BN simply because the directives and expectations are higher.

In most tests if a rider scored a 6 for every movement, including coefficients, they are sitting at a 40 penalty score. A six is “sufficient.” By that metric a 40 score is considered “sufficient”. Is it competitive in today’s showing? No. But when did it become “dangerous”?

Same test as above with one or two movements that score a 4 or 5, say a brief miscommunication where your horse picks up a wrong lead or goes above the bit briefly, and your score could easily be a 45 especially if it’s movements with coefficients.

I’ve gotten a 44 before at a recognized event (Novice) with a horse who did not have a single XC refusal in his near decade of competing. We were in the ribbons too. He was the last thing anyone could call dangerous. Granted this is very different than Modified but I can’t help see how with level creep this is going to play out years down the road. Amateurs can’t win BN anymore without a sub-30 score. I don’t know how positive a thing this really is, when the directives of BN are to “introduce a green horse to eventing” and you see a horse enter the ring in a 2nd level frame, and win the class/score higher when there is no requirement for that level of connection for BN tests. It’s all connected. We have level creep in XC and we’re seeing it in dressage too, just in different ways.

Not so long ago that a 40-45 score was not considered “dangerous”. I remember the year someone in my Training division won on a 41… this was not decades ago either.

[subk]

This is a great point beowulf!

“USDA promotes and encourages a high standard of accomplishment in dressage throughout the United States. To recognize the high standard, USDF has developed a comprehensive awards program to reward execellence, by offering award programs for everyone.”

The Bronze Medal is awarded based on achieving six qualifying scores of 60% or above at First, Second and Third levels.

That qualifying score is a 60% which translates to a score of 40 in eventing. So a 40 in eventing is recognized as a high standard in straight dressage but a 45 identifies you a “dangerous” in eventing.

[AMWookey]

A piss poor score in dressage probably isn’t going to kill you.

Jumping faults may.

[Blugal]

Another issue I have with the dressage being 45 is that its not like the judges use the full scale of marks. So when it was 50, which translated to 50%, that was the average of the 0-10 possible marks.

It wasn’t so long ago that in.pure dressage, the top scores were in the 60%s and occasional low 70%s. Nobody thought those rides were close to insufficient. They just weren’t using the full scale of marks.

Depending on your judge, you could end up with very different scores on different days.

I think once again TPTB are doing something that makes them feel they are making things safer, even if it isn’t backed up by data.

Or maybe they want to force more lower level entries at events, so the events don’t go broke and/or the upper levels can be subsidized…

[endlessclimb]

Random thought - is the reason that some horses are horrid at dressage and ok out on XC the ability to bit up for the jumping phases and/or use a martingale?

Again, just a random thought.

[Highflyer1]

I’ve had several that were not very good, and I can say with confidence that none of them would have been improved by any bit or martingale I ever tried. One was a headshaker, one was capable of mid-60s at First level on a good day and barely willing to stay in the ring on a bad day, and one was very large and hard to keep together and turned out to have cancer which probably didn’t help things.

I also competed at BN on a draft cross who has a lot of knee action this year, albeit at unrecognized events (all with at least L judges though) and his scores ranged from a 28 to a 45 for tests that were not that different. So I do wonder sometimes about the consistency of the scoring. Obviously if you are consistently in the 45 range in front of various judges, or if you completely blow up, that’s a bit different but I would be pretty annoyed to have a solid run that cost me $300 not count because bias was a factor.

[Texarkana]

My ”only BN aspirations” self will never have to worry about MERs, but I’m of two minds on the 45 score.

On one hand, I completely agree with @beowulf. Scores in the 40s at those levels happen for completely safe and normal reasons.

On the other hand, the older I get, the more I absolutely believe that horses who continually struggle with dressage have soundness issues more often than not. And if a horse has underlying soundness issues, they shouldn’t be moving up those levels. Is a 45 the right cut off point to address that? I don’t know. I thought 50 seemed reasonable but maybe it wasn’t.

Also, this is the point where someone will chime in with their anecdote about their jumping machine who was never unsound a day in their life and scored 3s and 4s on every dressage movement ever because he was so wretched in the ring. Believe me, I think we’ve all met a similar horse (hell I owned one). But I also think a horse can have underlying pain yet still excel at some things, and that doesn’t make you a bad person for riding them. We have gotten a little bonkers with what constitutes “sound” anymore.

[gardenie]

I am sad that the MER dressage score has decreased to 45. You can have a couple of 8’s, increasing tension due to weather, and a large mistake in a test and get a 42 with a horse that regularly scores in high 20’s and low 30’s at Intermediate as I well know. However, here’s some thought from someone as a young person rarely looked at or cared about her dressage score. Requiring a score of 45 probably would have forced me to look more keenly at my dressage tests back in the day. Today, I think a 45 is a fair expectation for horses BN-T to have as a requirement for an MER, rarely do horses at that level who are obedient score higher. If they do, that’s a bad day in dressage, and kick on, compete, and get an MER another day. M-A national horse trials, we are becoming a TV sport, you can watch eventing now on your phone or computer. So how we look doing dressage is being watched. Whether we like it or not, we are being encouraged to “look the part.” It used to be a badge of pride to ride a tense horse, many of our top riders in the day were lauded for that, but today when I see similar pairs competing in dressage today, I cringe a bit. Who wants to be on youTube DressageHub “Dressage Disasters” for eventing? Oh wait, there is something, “Sh*! Eventers Unite” on FB.

[Jealoushe]

I think it’s not so much about scoring over 45, but scoring over 45 for all your events and not able to lower that score in order to upgrade. If you complete 10 events you can still have 4 of those be over 45 in dressage and can upgrade.

A bad score isn’t a tell all at all, but consistency is what matters. A horse who routinely can’t score below 45 hasn’t done the homework required for the level.

That’s part of my argument. If you don’t do the work you don’t get to upgrade.

It’s actually harder to get a good score at the lower levels because there are fewer points to spread the score over and any one 5 or 4 can bump you down. There are more scores on higher level tests and more opportunities to make up for mistakes.

Overall I just don’t understand the push back on them wanting riders to perform better before upgrading. Taking time off to train more never killed anyone.

[Jealoushe]

I don’t think so because a martingale isn’t going to make a horse relax or work over the topline to get a good score. The basics and understanding are either there or they aren’t.

It might help on those days your horse is a kite and wants to fly out of the ring though!

[Jealoushe]

I think that’s one the social issues though. I don’t think TPTB are happy with riders just scraping by anymore.

[millerra]

Not necessarily.

I had one horse, very elastic mover, never bitted up. Too elastic for his own good and was not good at fast, pinging footwork. Always in the top 3 dressage- even when tense -wouldn’t look tense.

My current horse - so NOT a fabulous mover. Can ping off the ground at will.

Guess which one I prefer to do cross country on?

[endlessclimb]

I totally agree that a martingale won’t make a horse soft, but it will allow a bit to influence the bars of the mouth on a horse impersonating a giraffe. It’s more of a question of “is this horse snaffle-soft on the flat”, which clearly they are not.

Another question: While dressage USED TO not be a good gauge of whether or not a horse was safe XC, is that changing with the change in course type - going from galloping fences and covering ground to a more technical twisty-turny type course?

[Jealoushe]

I think it’s less about a horse being good at dressage and more about the level of training and understanding the horse and rider have.

So I think better dressage scores most of the time (not always) translates to better riding overall, which would benefit jumping.

I really think this is also less about bad dressage making horses unsafe on XC and more about having a standard for each of the disciplines and what is considered acceptable at the higher levels and what is not.

It seems like an effort to get riders to recognize that whether they like it or not dressage IS an important part of the overall test and needs to be respected the same as the others.