Official Tokyo Olympic Eventing Thread

[Jealoushe]

@McGurk

I still don’t know who this Sam actually is.

OMG…youre missing out. Sam Watson of the Irish eventing team and Equiratings.

Very smart, very funny and incredible horseman. I was lucky enough to ride in a clinic with him in 2019.

[EventerAJ]

@Marigold

I personally cannot think of any fence in that category that would need to be ridden very forward, but it’s early days on that one, of course.

Actually it’s not uncommon for an angled question or corners to be set on a forward distance. Corners on a turn can be a long distance depending on the line taken. That’s what makes it challenging at the upper levels; you can’t ride conservatively and carefully to a designed open distance…you have to put your leg on and trust that your horse will hold the line. It’s easy to ride skinnies, corners, and angles from a steady canter; it’s easier to keep the horse straight, more time for him to read the question, etc. It doesn’t require boldness. Kicking on to a big corner or severe angle tests the preparation, training, and “want to” of a horse at that level. If the horse gets long to an accuracy question, the choice to run out becomes very inviting.

If you just shorten all the distances, you encourage backwards riding, and I think those consequences would be worse than a run out or a hind-end tripped frangible device.

[endlessclimb]

That actually does sound super fun!

[Jealoushe]

Agreed

[Marigold]

@EventerAJ

Actually it’s not uncommon for an angled question or corners to be set on a forward distance. Corners on a turn can be a long distance depending on the line taken. That’s what makes it challenging at the upper levels; you can’t ride conservatively and carefully to a designed open distance…you have to put your leg on and trust that your horse will hold the line. It’s easy to ride skinnies, corners, and angles from a steady canter; it’s easier to keep the horse straight, more time for him to read the question, etc. It doesn’t require boldness. Kicking on to a big corner or severe angle tests the preparation, training, and “want to” of a horse at that level. If the horse gets long to an accuracy question, the choice to run out becomes very inviting.

If you just shorten all the distances, you encourage backwards riding, and I think those consequences would be worse than a run out or a hind-end tripped frangible device.

I should have been more careful in my phrasing: I didn’t mean fences in that category that wouldn’t need to be ridden on a forward distance, I meant fences in that category that wouldn’t need to be ridden at a very forward rate of speed.

Sam wasn’t saying he was planning on adding strides to those fences in the future, or shortening up his horse’s step, he was saying he wouldn’t carry the same groundspeed (the literal mathematical equation for force is mass * acceleration - obviously you can’t change the mass of the horse, so travelling through those combos with less acceleration means you can reduce the force you apply to the fence and therefore the pin).

I absolutely agree that it’s fundamental to require horses to be accurate on a variety of distances at those levels, and I wouldn’t want to see that taken away, nor would I want to see the backwards riding you mention encouraged (that seems like a great way to invite more serious falls). From the podcast they were discussing rate of speed/acceleration through the combos, and thank you for prompting me to clarify.

[OverandOnward]

@Marigold

Sam wasn’t saying he was planning on adding strides to those fences …

I still keep hearing the voice of Sam The Horse Jung … I gotta get more familiar with Sam Equiratings.