Just because I am taking a statistics course, this question has been on my mind. I have no dog in this fight as I am out of showing entirely (except for volunteering.) However, one thing that used to bother me is how arbitrary the placings were at the end of the day. You are randomly placed with a group of people at roughly the same level and really depending on how THEY do determines your place as well as how you do. When events used to hold showjumping last and had a victory gallop and you actually stood side by side with your competition, it made more sense. But now that xc is held last and for the most part each discipline is pretty much one large group (at least in my area), wouldn’t it make sense to divide the sections after the fact? So if the show divides Novice into 5 sections, the top 5 scores get 1st place? Has anyone ever done it this way before? I’ve never seen it done, but I was never fond of getting a low ribbon because there were 5 imported horses in my class. And I think I was always equally (if not more) dismayed when winning because I was the only one who stayed on. 
Thoughts?
Isn’t there a hunter class-division method that allows for this? I’m not sure, I don’t show hunter. I was trying to figure out how a friend’s class might be split and was reading the rules and came across this.
As I read it, hypothetically if the judge is placing to 6th place in a division that is to be split, the judge actually ranks the top 12. There are two 1sts, two 2nds, two 3rds, etc. Then, that is the class division, with one set of placings 1st-6th becoming the top of the new class. If that makes sense.
It seems fair to me. I don’t know how they split the rest, everyone who didn’t place – numerically by back number, or something.
OP you are right about the arbitrariness of who ends up in which sub-division of a level, in the way that many horse trials split a division. That used to drive me a bit crazy. Especially when they had not sub-divided by “horse”, “rider” and “open”. I belong with the amateurs on mid-rank and often aging horses. I did not appreciate riding against a pro on a client’s imported young warmblood.
I would prefer that regardless of the number of entrants in BN rider, for example, that there be ribbons 1 through 6, and everyone with lower scores would simply be placed numerically. It has been a while since I went to the AEC’s but as I recall this was how they worked.
Sadly that would require that ALL entrants considered to be at the same level have an “Apples to apples” experience. That would mean the same dressage judge and ideally arena for all of them. For a myriad of reasons not to mention weather, logistics etc, this wouldn’t be as easy to accommodate as it may seem.
Not to mention… the 5th highest score is not a winning score. Right now the divisions are divided (Open, Horse, Rider, etc) And the top winning score of each won that grouping.
Riders get a choice what division they enter and I think most are savvy enough to know that the Horse divisions and open are the most likely to be the most challenging when competing against pros etc. Rider divisions are great for those with less experience. But you can be past the point of competing in a rider division if your MER’s place you up a few levels.
I have not seen as many eventer chase ribbons the way hunters do. We came, we saw, we jumped is the usual motto. And placings tell us how our skills measure up.
Em
I am happy with the Horse, Rider and Open divisions.
A lot of horse trials where I am have not enough entries to use those divisions. They don’t offer them. So they decide nearly the day of to divide a division or not. And then it is arbitrary who ends up in which group.
What I’m saying is that the rider does not have the chance to select for themselves the horse, rider and open options.
There are already measures in place to divide large classes into non-random groups. If a division is large enough to field 5 sections it should be divided into open/horse/rider/junior divisions based on the experience level of the horse and/or rider. I would probably be annoyed if an event chose to ignore the established system and instead went with the method you described. A fourth place ribbon for a 20th place score wouldn’t have any value to me, but I also don’t place much value on my placings in general. The nice thing about eventing is you get a numerical score so you can evaluate your success regardless of how everyone else does. Ribbons are a nice bonus but never my goal when I compete. There’s always going to be a degree of luck involved in pretty much any type of competition, that’s part of the fun.
That’s an interesting idea, I had never considered that. Isn’t this similar to how barrel racing places competitors with 1D, 2D, etc? I don’t know how those actually work. Can someone with barrel racing experience chime in? (I have tried to google how it works, but the explanations didn’t make sense to me)
@Xctrygirl, in my area, a lot of times we will have 2 or 3 large divisions at the same level, simply split into A and B groups. Sometimes there will be a rider division in addition to the arbitrarily split 2. I’m not sure how they split them. On the entry form, I always mark my preference to be in the rider division if possible. I usually end up in the rider division, but not always. Though it’s been a couple years so I may be misremembering.
Have you ever asked the secretary how they’re split???
Em
In USEA recognized events, amateurs will receive an upgrade placing if competing against pros in an open division. Those go towards AEC qualification as well as leaderboard points.
You don’t receive an additional ribbon, just get the upgrade point wise.
I have not, it hasn’t bothered me enough to ask for more info. But you’re right, if I were really invested I should ask about it. Just wanted to share my experience that levels aren’t always split into horse/rider/amateur divisions.
There is another very sore point for me on how lower level eventing is sometimes handled. Warning that I do think there are huge gender based attitudes and prejudices embedded in eventing.
It is fine if some riders say “I don’t care about my placings, I just like to evaluate my score against other scores“. That is fine for them.
But to a competitive spirit, the point of competition is the placings. Not just riding for one’s own score, but competitively against other riders and their scores.
Sometimes I ride just for the experience. But most of the time I am chasing satin! I want to plan how to win the year end leading scores for my division. That’s what competition is ultimately about.
It has really chapped me that it is assumed that because so many lower level eventers are women, they aren’t interested in being competitive.
Too often it is assumed that males are competitive, but women are less so. So dividing divisions as they are intended to be divided, and even scoring accurately, are not important, because so many of the competitors are women.
This attitude of dismissiveness of the competitive aspect of competition absolutely infuriates me. I have done a long preparation, made enormous effort to be there, and spent a great deal of money in order to compete in the group where I belong.
But then somebody arbitrarily shuffles the entries as if they were a deck of cards, and I and my older horse end up against a pro on an upper level prospect that belongs in the “Horse“ division, if there were one.
As far as just riding the course, I can get the same riding experience in a school with a trainer for a lot less money and effort. I can get a dressage score at a ride-test. I didn’t have to come to a horse trials just to ride.
I agree with the OP that there is way too much arbitrariness in the way divisions are sorted out at actual horse trails, or at least the ones that I attend. They do not use the prearranged groupings of horse, rider, and open.
I can’t imagine such a casual attitude towards dividing groups, and even keeping accurate score, with a set of competitors who were almost all male.
I don’t see anyone assuming women don’t care about being competitive, I think it’s a stretch to argue there’s a gender component here. The rules as written seem like a reasonable attempt to divide up the levels as fairly as possible, nothing casual about it. If the events you’re attending are legitimately not scoring accurately or making unreasonable divisions instead of following convention then those are issues to raise with the organizers.
My guess is the real problem is not that those events actually have a cavalier attitude towards their female competitors, but more that there just aren’t enough entries to justify anything other than a random division of a moderately large level. There aren’t always going to be enough entries to support having all of the different possible sub-divisions. This isn’t really a problem in my area but I can see how it would be frustrating if every competition you went to was already sewn up by the local pro on their future 5* horse. I have no problem with people going out and trying to win, my comments weren’t intended to dismiss that in any way. But what solution would you propose instead? I don’t see any way of sub-dividing the levels that eliminates the possibility that you’d be competing against someone with advantages that you don’t have. You’d have to winnow down the groups so much that everyone was basically guaranteed a ribbon, which doesn’t seem satisfying to me at all. I’m competitive enough not to want to win a tiny division with a score that I know wouldn’t hold it’s own in better company. Instead I choose to focus on improving my scores to be as competitive as possible going forward, and if I manage to snag a ribbon in the meantime that’s even better. Maybe that’s different from your definition of competitive but I don’t think it’s any less valid, and it definitely has nothing to do with my gender.
Not quite.
On the entry form you get to list your PREFERENCES for which section you want to be in, but there is no guarantee that is where you will compete. If 3 people express a preference for the rider division and 3 people express a preference for the horse division, and 40 people are only eligible for the Open division, there will probably be (at least in Area II) two sections of Open, and everybody will be in them. Organizers don’t want to run a Rider section of only 3 entries and a Horse section of only 3 entries.
I don’t think this is a fair characterization but it also isn’t really relevant to the topic I was responding to. There are definitely gender issues at play in our sport, I just don’t think the way we split up beginner novice divisions is one of them.
Whoa, i think it’s a big leap to say that how BN and N divisions has an unfair gender component.
The unfortunate parts of that are that amateurs are more often the ones who would treasure a ribbon won by their horse, Vs trainers who have lots of horses and many more competitions. And AECs aren’t a goal for many here, since they’re so far away (Kentucky more often than not, which is not realistic from CA without a lot of $)
So yeah, quite a few times I’ve had a pro in my division take the ribbons, instead of being in the Open division, and it was pretty irritating because I go to competitions to compete.
Around SE PA it seems like things do get split into horse/rider/open (which is great) and then further into groups of under 10 people, and that does seem weird to me. Like 21 entries split into 3 groups. I don’t need a participation ribbon, I’d rather place against all the competitors in my group even if it means I don’t get a ribbon.
The way barrel racing Ds work is that they take the winning run… say it’s 16.5 seconds, and then pick a time, so say like… 1 second.
So the 1D money placings would be, say… the top 10 fastest runs.
the 2D money placing would be the top ten fastest runs after 1 second, so… top 10 after 17.5 seconds
3D would be top 10 after 18.5 seconds
and so on…
It’s a way for everyone at all levels to have a chance of making some money back.
Curious why you think it would become a participation ribbon if it is split after the fact? For May Daze this weekend, there are 6 sections of Novice; 3 are Senior Novice Rider, 1 is Junior and 2 are Open. So if you are a Senior Novice Rider, your “group” could be considered all 36 of the riders in three sections of Senior Novice. If your end score is 5th highest of these 36, your ribbon would be 2nd place if it is split after the fact or could be anywhere from 1st to 5th place if randomly split beforehand. I just think the second place would be more indicative of how you did.
Yes, the California split. It has been pretty controversial in the hunter world but when it is a big class, I definitely feel it is fair. And a lot of those people are chasing year end awards so that makes it even more important.
