When you google “Jumper Course” or “Hunter Course” you respectively find either one.
Where can I look to find ideas for cones courses, and hazards?
Google “working equitation” - not sure if that’s exactly what you want - but it’s interesting !
that’s pretty neat, but I was hoping of more ideas how to place barrels or something and then where ABCDE would be going through said barrels.
Is it that there should be 10feet clearance between the barrels?
cones and marathon courses
you might want to email the CDL
or marc johnson, obstacle21@aol.com. He is a course designer and did the course at black prong and does many ADTs in new england and Florida.
I think the minimum width for a gap is 8 ft. that is the minimum to be ADS,useF, FEI legal but you are free to make it wider, there is no rule for a maximum gate width. For cones, it is 40 cm wider than your axle for training level, 35 cm for prelim, 30 for intermediate and 20 cm for advanced and teams and tandems get 10 extra cm for their level. There is a great chart in the appendix of the ADS rule book and it can also be found in the USEF driving section. it includes minimums for boxes, Ls and serpentines.
www.americandrivingsociety.org
www.usef.org
when i do our courses here at the farm, I usually do a figure 8 with 2 twenty meter circles, a serpentine and some offsets. I also usually put 3 sets of cones in a row 30 meters apart, which is very flexible. my cones at home are more like flowing hunter courses because i like the horses to learn to relax and go forward through the cones at a good pace.
good luck with your course
Wendy
Its not easy to find cones courses or obstacles on-line
For most shows these are paper - given out to competitors to learn.
Most TDs and course designers collect PAPER courses that they have worked on or watched over the years
One thing I have found helpful is to look at hunter and jumper courses and substitute cones for the jump standards and rails. Another idea is use the ADS and FEI dressage tests as the basis for the track.
I do not liike courses that ar purposefully “tricky”. One hallmark of those is to have lots of cones (or hazard gates) backwards to you so you cants see where you are going next. You cant totally avoid this with cones - but really - enuf is enuf!
Another tip to see if a course YOU have planned is driveable - is to drive it with a golf cart or regular car. If you cant make the turns without stopping around corners, then it wont drive well with a horse either. This does not include the multiple obstacles, which have specific distances
A great place to learn alot about cones is the back of the ADS rulebook. There are many things that have specific distances. For example, cones should be a minimum of 15 meters between one and the next. There is a specific distance from the start to the first cone and the last cone to the finish. "L"s, "U"s, boxes, serpentines, deviations all have specific measurements and all are detailed in the rulebook
As far as hazards go, the 3 basic rules are that gates are a minimum of 2M wide, the total length of the shortest route is no more than 250M, and the height of gates should be 1.3M The height is basically to prevent harness from getting hung up on hazard elements and was put in for 4-in-hands. It is less useful for ponies and for minis… in those cases you need to be more concerned with having construction low enuf so the pony/mini & cart cannot get under the hazard
Many of the world championships in the past have posted both photos and diagrams of the hazards (and sometimes the cone course as well)
Just remember that those courses are for the most advanced drivers in the sport and lower levels should not be driving that degree of difficulty.
Also in th rulebook are specifications for number of gates for various levels like Training =3, Prelim=4, etc
when a hazard is driven by multiple levels the same gate must be used for all. the lower levels have only the advantage of not worrying about E or F gates. Sometimes this makes the hazard more appropriate for the lower level but sometimes gates A-B-C are the hardest part of the hazard - in which case that hazard really is not appropriate for the lowest levels
Again a cheap trick used by many designers is to place gate A on the totally opposite side of the hazard and backwards to the entrance. This is fine for one hazard but with only 6 to 8 hazards per course, using it on every hazard gets old!
Have fun working on courses
I can’t get much of the ADS site to work. I need to log in… do you have to pay?~
Are you an ADS Member? If so, there is no fee… just contact the office for sign-in info.
Unfortunately (IMO) the powers that be decided that to encourage membership, they’d shield most of the info on the site from the general public. I know there are users out there who will use the site without joining, but I prefer to think there are MORE people who will join because the site is so helpful and they want to support it.
Shielding stuff just means people will look elsewhere for that info.
I wanted to bring this topic back up. We’re planning to set up our own “cones” course to practice on.
I’d hoped to find a cones layout on the Internet … but failed miserably.
We’ll be driving on our property part of which is accidentally ideally set up for an obstacle course. But trees don’t move if you get too close … and cones do.
The idea of using a hunter/jumper course is excellent … and our fall back position. But if there are any other ideas or links that you are aware of, your ideas would be appreciated!
THANKS!
