But right now, the riders of the 15.3 hand horses are competing against horses that are at most one Inch taller. Now you want them to compete against horses that are 2 inches taller, so with this rule change you will basically be putting the 15.3 hand horses in the same situation that 15.2 hand horses are in now. How many kids today are competing in the small juniors on horses that measure 15.2? Will the division really fill by increasing the height limit by one inch, or will the under 16 hand horses currently competing in the division be phased out by the over 16 hand, under 16.1 horses that will be considered small juniors? I really think all this will do is move some large junior horses to the small junior division, and completely eliminate most of the under 16 hand horses altogether.
I tend to agree that this will make the 15.3 small even less marketable. The only reason to seek out a small is to have both a small and a large to show. If 16.1 is now a small who wouldn’t look for that over 15.3 when the 16.1 is more marketable overall. If it doesn’t make it as a junior it’ll be easier to sell to an adult or as a childrens hunter.
The reality is that under whatever the “favored” height is always going to be hard to sell and moving the needle all around to try to keep a division going doesn’t change that. And it doesn’t make the smaller ones more marketable. It just makes the “new smalls” that used to be the “small larges” more appealing.
Seems to me that this is an artificial problem, and could be fixed with better judging and a single Junior division, suitability to count. Why shouldn’t it be ok for a horse to go around on the add (provided it has the step for the combinations)? Big “lopers” and smaller “carrying a pace” horses should be able to compete against each other - hunters ought to be about riding each fence like the one before (and in a non-scary way), right?
Looking from the outside in, it seems to me that many of the USEF and USHJA rules are tilted to the benefit horse brokers. Selling horses seems to be the most lucrative (and perhaps one of the only ways) in which people in the business can make a living. Many of them are on the boards and committees of both of our U.S. organizations and they are well represented in the FEI governance as well.
I don’t know if the current model is sustainable. For the future of horse sport in the long term , I think perhaps it is not.
It’s the same in any sport involving animals, and horses in particular. If a big slow canter is good, then bigger and slower is better. If a slow lope in a western pleasure horse is good, then so slow you’re barely moving is better. If extravagant gaits in dressage is good, even more outrageously extravagant is better.
It’s all completely arbitrary. There is nothing in the rule book that says hunters are to be rewarded for how slowly they cover the ground, yet here we are.
Historically, yes. A truly exceptional Small Junior, that walks the lines & has already proven it can jump itself out of a chip at 3’6", was probably the top-tier price of the whole hunter game because there simply aren’t that many of them. The problem has always been that they don’t fetch those numbers until they’re out there doing the Junior job, chips & all. So they cost more to produce (all the way through the Greens and, ideally, find a good kid to throw on it for a respectable JH debut) and through all of that you can hope, but can’t really know, if it’s gonna go do the job for the average-riding kid. So, it’s basically a multi-year gamble with extremely high overhead & not super favorable odds. But when it pays off, it pays off… that is, as long as the division fills.
And because apparently I’m a nerd that has picked this hill to die on…
Of the 21 Small Junior Hunters 15 & Under at Devon this year…
Only 2 measured below 15.3 1/2. Two.
So we’re trying to fill an entire division on basically a 1" phenotype. 15.1 and 15.2 are not coming back as popular 3’6" hunters, they just aren’t. Nobody’s breeding for it because that’s way too narrow of a gap for a genetic crap shoot and definitely not the market preference.
I feel like people are coming from the idea that a Small Junior literally starts at 14.3h and has a good 5" height differential from which to pull competitors, and that’s just not the case. Whereas Large Juniors have a range of ~8" to pull competitors from, Small Juniors realistically have about 2" to work with, and that’s simply not many horses.
So yes, 15.3h may have to show against 16. 7/8h, but if this division disappears they will absolutely be competing against 17.3h line-walkers. Every weekend. And suddenly the gamble on a 15.3h baby green horse becomes much riskier.
It’s worth noting that all the comments (so far) on this RC proposal (7) are in favor of it, so I’m a little curious about the strong stance against it here. If you want to encourage graduating pony kids to ride more aptly sized animals then you should want this division (which is intended specifically for those kids) to be preserved. If you want to see 15.2h & 15.3h animals get a fair shake at being fancy A circuit hunters in well-kept homes, then you should want to see this division preserved.
Well said! I’m someone who prefers to ride a smaller horse and ideally, would love to import and sell smaller horses but it’s so darn hard when everyone, whether they’re 5’1" or 6’4" thinks they need 17 hands+.
The 12’ stride has not gone anywhere in the 3’, USEF Junior Hunters have traditionally jumped 3’6” where 14’ is more appropriate for that height and spread. 3’3” is new since I showed so no idea there.
One of the best Hunters I ever saw was 15.3 and change. Strapless.
I get where dags is coming from.
To be clear, I don’t feel strongly either way about whether or not this rule change passes and I think if it does pass, it probably will result in more small juniors at the shows. But I would bet that the majority of the entries are going to fall between 16.0 and 16.1, a few will be between 15.3 and 16.0, there will be very few if any 15.3 horses, and there will still be none at 15.2.
I’m taking a break before I go teach my next class and got to this point in the discussion when my researcher brain kicked in, so apologies for dragging this up again. I have to wonder what the correlation is between height and stride length, and if the “bigger horses have a bigger step” isn’t something that doesn’t factor in until you go to the two ends of the spectrum. Most 15.1hh horses won’t have a big stride, and obviously something that stands 18hh is going to be on the opposite end of that, but I’ve come across enough 15.2hh-16hh that have huge strides that I’m thinking it’s in people’s heads more than a real factor. 16.2hh = the perfect stride length seems fairly arbitrary to me.
My two jumpers (WBs) are 15.3 1/2hh and 16 1/2hh and they have HUGE strides; bigger than these 16.3-17.1hh horses I sometimes lesson with. I have to make mine compact and sit down the lines and the taller horses have to hustle.
This is a too-small n, but again, I’ve had enough experience with horses of all different types and I’m not sure the most important correlation is stride and height. My 16.2+hh TB also has a massive stride. It’s really the way they are built, not their withers height. The TB takes up less leg than the other two but he has incredible conformation and it nets him a big stride.
But, maybe it doesn’t matter, because that is the correlation in everyone’s head, so that is what the market is shaped by. Just musing about it.
It is… but it also really comes down to the horses we have to choose from. These hunters were supposed to be 1.40m jumpers in Europe, and you’re just not going to aim for 15.3h with that end-goal in mind.
But that is an entirely different discussion about the quality of horses bred in America for American jobs over the last 20-30 years. That’s getting a whole heck of a lot better and we may have a true American Hunter type here before too long. And we’ll actually have some say in what that looks like.
Except I’ve not seen anyone out breaking down the jumps and adjusting the lines in when they move the 3’6 down to 3’3 or 3’ (or vice versa) at most of the shows I’ve been to recently, and the distances in the 3’ at places like WEC are LOOOONG. So yeah, 3’ horse are doing 14’ lines at this point on the regular.
I definitely see the jump crew adjusting the lines all the time when they change the jumps from 3’6” to 3’3” to 3’ to 2’6”. Ditto when they change the jump heights for the ponies.
And if not, they’re doing it wrong.
I don’t care much about the small junior proposal (I wouldn’t say I’m for or against it) but I’m just pointing out we’ll be right back here drawing a new arbitrary line in a year or two because you can’t fight “everyone wants big” by incentivizing having small by incrementally moving the needle on where small ends and big begins.
Maybe I didn’t articulate well, but you have completely misquoted and mischaracterized what I was saying. It has been quite some time since I participated in this discussion, but I do believe you’re taking my comment out of context. My whole point was that the cost of showing rated shows is prohibitively high in so many other ways, so much so that I am not showing. I hardly think $80 per year (amortized) is going to affect anyone’s show budget. The $500 vs 1000 was meant to illustrate how crazy expensive showing is… I can’t afford either. So, before you accuse me of being out of touch, maybe read more critically?
ETA: I went back to look and the numbers quoted were because another poster said $300, not $80, for parent in fees per year. So the $300 extra per show was only if they showed one show per year and was incorrect regardless. Still a mischaracterization of what I said.
The 3’6” divisions have had longer strides for a long time. And some places (Devon, indoors, some shows that just followed indoors, some shows that had big “outside” courses, etc.) were notorious for stretching the lines and setting max jump spec. too. The courses are the same for the AOs, and no one has ever been up in arms about horse height in that division. Or the first year greens. Perhaps the division was first envisioned to encourage truly small horses for pony kid cross overs. But I don’t know when that was, if ever. The lines have always separated the 3’ horses from the 3’6”+ horses for the most part. Lesser extent scope for the height.
I am ok with the couple of sub-16 hand horses competing with the rest on age splits. And I used to have a small junior who had to hustle a bit. But she was competitive in the medals against a lot of large horses. And I had another small that I wished measured a large (to do both divisions), and the more I tried to get him to stand up tall, the farther away we seemed to get from 16h. He was very successful, and I remember being protested once shortly after we moved up, and the steward there was the one who had measured him, and she just laughed and told us about the complaint later. But it was because the horse “looked big” (he was a TB but long) and he indeed had to whoa in the lines most of the time if we carried enough pace to encourage him not to rub every fence.
Your 18h horse might walk the lines by nature but it’s got to jump well too after all.
Age splits would make it such that riders did more competing against themselves, but I don’t think that raising one inch every few years is any better or really does anything meaningful to the market for a quality horse.
I was hoping NSBA would be a sustained movement but it was not. However, the fees at the show were the same as usef shows. They had to cover the costs of such a venue. Nsba memberships also jumped in price the second year. Not as much as usef but also we never got to have any finals or anything.
I personally don’t see a lot of value that usef brings if i compare my experiences at WEC with usef shows. However, there is another venue in PA that does schooling and usef shows. The schooling shows always undermaintain the rings and the footing doesn’t hold up. Usef shows water and drag more aggressively. same footing. So I clearly see a difference in value there.
Horse showing is a runaway train of expenses. I believe usef is out of touch and just keeps making more rules to bandaid bigger issues. The whole Amateur task force to rewrite those rules was a big disappointment. I’m sure they had good intentions. But also, I wouldn’t hire a bunch of horse people and former trainers to run a large organization. The last two presidents (Kessler and O’Mara) are supposedly accomplished CEOs but I don’t see an improvement there. At the end of the day it’s a necessary evil if you want to horse show at top venues 
Is that actually related to one set of shows being USEF rated? Or is it just that the manager at the USEF shows is more on top of the footing situation? Unless the two sets of shows are run by the same manager.
I ran a set of one-day schooling shows at the same facility that was used once a year for a nice USEF show run by a charity auxiliary. I got one drag the night before. We would water the rings pretty thoroughly before the drag and early the next day. The USEF show would come in the week before and water and tractor all week. Seemed like different footing. I lnow they didn’t add anything.
