Please forgive a non-eventer

[Mondo]

I thought I understood how the dressage scores were arrived at. I just re-read the rules regarding dressage scoring for Eventing. My understanding seems to be correct in that the scores are arrived at exactly the same way they are for plain dressage competitions, except that the average (percentage) is then subtracted from 100 to give the penalty points which is the dressage score. OK. Easy to understand. Now I’m scratching my head. I just looked at the dressage scores posted on the home page of COTH here - and it seemed to be giving very favorable attention to the person who scored 46 penalties. In a regular dressage competition that would be a 54 percent which would not be a score to write home about.

What am I missing?

Again - I do not Event, I am a dressage rider/trainer and I am NOT being snarky. I just want to educate myself. Thank you!

[caffeinated]

At Roelx I don’t think it’s a direct 100- score to get to the penalty - the leading rider now has a 44.6 but the % score is a 70.24

I had to look around but in FEI levels apparently the penalty score is multiplied by 1.5 for some reason of “weighting” that someone else could probably explain better.

[Sancudo]

You are missing “and multiply by 1.5”

Here’s the scoreboard with Dressage percentage and Penalty points http://startbox-real-time-2017.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/leaderBoard.html

[Mondo]

OH!! Thank you both. Yes, makes much more sense now.

[Sancudo]

I’m sure Vineyridge can weigh in on the weighting of the 1.5 … it’s a fairly contentious topic on whether it’s justified or not

[Highflyer]

@Sancudo

I’m sure Vineyridge can weigh in on the weighting of the 1.5 … it’s a fairly contentious topic on whether it’s justified or not

[NCRider]

The excessive weight of the dressage phase is one of the biggest problems I have with modern eventing. If you look up and down the leaderboard, the current leader has an 11 point lead over horses that scored a 70 in the dressage. That’s 28 seconds on xc.

Assume LG uses every second of that extra time. Opinions may differ but IMHO a horse that scores a 70 in dressage and goes double clear XC and SJ should never ever lose to a horse that was so slow it missed optimum time by 30 seconds on an 11 min xc, the phase that differentiates eventing from other equestrian disciplines, solely because it could thrown down a super duper awesome 77% third level dressage test.

It hasn’t happened yet at Rolex 2017, but it could.

The implications of that fact impact all aspects of the sport, from safety, to horse selection, to use of time, to cost of participation, to loss of venues, etc. etc. etc.

The simple solution, is to pick a good dressage score (I used to think 65 but 70 is the new 65) and start the penalties there. So as long as you score 70 or above, you start xc on a 45. Keep a side list call the “tie breaker list” in the order of actual dressage scores. If people end up tied at the end of the day, use the actual dressage scores to break the ties. It would re center the xc phase, reward better dressage in the case of actual ties, but it would prevent people from winning by being so good at the dressage that they can be average at the xc.

[Mondo]

Wow. I agree with you completely NCRider. Used to be that the dressage score wasn’t such a big deal. Everyone knows it’s the XC that separates the wheat from the chaff - otherwise, why not just be a dressage rider or H/J rider?

Why was it set up that way? Do you know? Is it to promote slower (therefore “safer”) XC rides?

[NCRider]

No, the idea is still to go clear on xc, and the actual winner will likely have gone close to clear because there will be people scoring mid 70’s in the dressage who will be closer than 28 seconds away at the start of xc, so LG will have to at least try to come close to optimum time if he wants to stay in range. But overall the horses certainly aren’t selected for the ease at which they’ll run and jump for 11 minutes anymore because to be truly competitive you’ve got to be 75% or better in the dressage unless you get lucky.

As an aside, some of the worst xc falls I’ve ever seen have been from riders coming in slow and underpowered so it’s not speed that’s necessarily dangerous. there’s some data that seems to show that it’s the intense combination of speeding up and slowing down that creates some of the problems.

Back to your question. A couple of reasons for the scoring. First, it’s left over form the long format days when it was perceived as necessary for correctly weighting the phases. The elimination of the endurance part triggered the law of unintended consequences. Eliminate the difficult xc, and suddenly everyone is bunched. Then you need some way to differentiate the horses, so make the dressage tests and SJ more difficult (and the xc more technical). Remove the relation of both phases to xc from the directives and judge them on their own merits, not as they relate to the horse’s ability to perform both in xc and dressage (fit and obedient enough) or xc and sj (energetic and sound enough after xc to do basic SJ)

In the past, not many horses that could pull close to 80 in the dressage would have the physiology to make it safely and successfully around a real long format xc so there was no point in trying. Now they can. So eventers bought warmbloods and drilled drilled drilled the dressage. Some of them needed so much fitness work they had trouble staying sound beyond one or two FEI events. So demand perfect footing. Or shorter courses, etc. So costs increase, etc. etc. There was a bit of a course correction after people realized that the WB needed a good amount of blood to succeed at the upper levels even with the short format, but now you have the faux eventing like WEF, etc. so we’re effectively in the process of changing the sport again to allow dodgy xc horses to succeed.

Finally, the FEI is dominated to some extent by the European warmblood breeders and by preserving the dressage scoring while completely eliminating the endurance component, they opened a new market for their horses that aren’t quite good enough for straight dressage or SJ at the highest levels. $$$$$

The funniest part of the whole thing is that the best rider in the world is a rockstar at all of it and does make the time so people point to him and say that if the best wins, what are people complaining about.

[vineyridge]

What gripes me so much and has made me a crusader against the dressage coefficient is that people can have double clears in both jumping phases and are ranked below other riders just because of that extra .5 in the coefficient. At one of the 4*s last year Portersize Just a Jif would have been second without the extra penalties and actually placed sixth. At another one, Jonelle Price would have won without the extra dressage ding. Mark Todd won’t have won Badminton in 2011 without the coefficient point differential.

Riders simply cannot make up for their dressage score with the extra coefficient penalties today with perfect jumping phases.

[Mondo]

Thanks again for these clear explanations. Sounds like most of the other equestrian disciplines: as goes the money, so goes the sport.

[tbchick84]

I heard them say today that a 70 is the equivalent of 45 penalty points. It’s a good jumping off point for figuring out which way things are going.

[OverandOnward]

Actually, in the current 4*'s, for all practical purposes the dressage co-efficient has been nullified by cranking down the optimum time. So many time penalties are accumulated on XC by the majority of pairs, the time obliterates the significance of the coefficient. This secures the top placings for those few elite riders on the fastest and fittest great jumpers. They still have to turn in a very good dressage test. But a great dressage horse can’t get to the top of the leaderboard just by jumping around clear, without speed.

And today’s Rolex KY course is a great case example. Cross-country thoroughly rattled the dressage leaderboard. Currently, after cross-country, the top 22 have no jumping penalties. But Livio, Tindall, Brown, Burnett, Dutton, Payne, etc. raised themselves well up the leaderboard by jumping both fast and clear. While Jessica Phoenix & Pavarotti, 6th after dressage, jumped clear with 29.6 time penalties to drop them to 17th.

So while the coefficient matters, and does change the order in many cases, in many other cases the XC time penalties - and today, the jumping as well - now matters much more at the 4* level.

At other levels, the coefficient does have a big effect and is definitely a point of contention as a valid way to place eventing.

[vineyridge]

They can’t “crank down the optimum time”. It’s totally a function of the course distance, per FEI rules. As far as I can tell, it’s the course length divided by the number of mpm for the level. That gives the number of minutes that a course of that length should run. In the case of three and four stars, that’s 570 meters per minute.

You can also go backwards with the calculation. This Rolex course was 11minutes, 17 seconds, which is 17 seconds distance over the minimum 4* length. I’m assuming they measure the short routes for time setting.

[OverandOnward]

@vineyridge

They can’t “crank down the optimum time”. It’s totally a function of the course distance, per FEI rules. As far as I can tell, it’s the course length divided by the number of mps for the level. That gives the number of seconds that a course of that length should run.

That factor has been adjustable. Everything is subject to change. I made a post quite a long time ago comparing scores historically and showing that time penalties have become much more significant in final scores over a certain period of years … too long ago to find it, but it is in the results.

[vineyridge]

The only way the designers can fiddle with the time is through the design itself. They can use terrain to speed up and slow down horses, and they can use the type of jumps, the combinations and the distances to slow horses down within the set time. But they cannot change the time for the course distance.

The reason courses have become so technical is to increase time penalties. The Cross Country course designers are trying to overcome the dressage coefficient by making the horses have to go slower in more places. The designers are trying to keep XC the most important phase, and the only means they have is with technicalities that slow horses down…

That’s why XC is so often described as “show jumping with gallops in between.”

[Lord_Helpus]

Call me a rebel, but I think the coefficint is important. Viney, this is not a jumping sport. Just because horses can jump well and fast does not mean that they deserve to win. What makes eventing special is the combination of the 3 elements. Before the co-efficient was added, dressage was all but irrelevant. Now horses must be at least mediocre in dressage.

In this part of the world, there is a new, fun event called Derby Cross. It combines XC questions with SJ questions and is usually held out in a huge field. THAT us what eventing would be without a dressage portion that is meaningful in the final results.

PS: People seem to love Derby Cross. It attracts both show jumpers who want to have fun, and eventers who want to practice XC and SJ.

[vineyridge]

Why shouldn’t horses go into the jumping phases on their dressage score?

When the coefficient was added, the sport was very different. Remember that it came BEFORE the loss of road and tracks and steeplechase which pretty much determined the type of horse who could complete a CCI. Finding a horse that could do “dressage” and then get through endurance day would be like finding a diamond in my backyard. Not impossible but almost. When roads and track and steeplechase were ditched, riders started focusing on horses that could do dressage better. With those horses not needing endurance, the coefficient overweighted dressage in the new sport–IMO.

I do agree that back in long format days they needed to do something to make dressage influential. With the .6 coefficient, that happened only with dressage tests with many available points.