That was what I thought, but all the posters up thread kept saying about crossing their own path so I sat here trying to figure out a way to do some of these described things with out crossing their path and I just could not come up with anything that did not involve a huge loop.
As long as the water is not flagged or part of an element, you can circle and cross your own path.
It gets tricky if the water itself is flagged, not just the jumps.
The water was flagged for the lower levels. Possibly you can circle all you want as that is not your jump. You can cross your path on CC. There has got to be a rule on this.
Yes, it is only an issue if you go through flags backwards if you are “toe-dipping” before jumping the fence[s]. It gets tricky to “toe dip” if the only option for water entry is flagged.
The biggest number of riders “schooling the water” that I have seen was at Prelim at Surefire a few years ago. The fact that the water was bright blue might have had something to do with it.
In many cases the riders at lower levels, who really WOULD benefit by “schooling the water” do not know that they can do it.
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First, on cross country you can circle and cross your path as many times as you want BEFORE you “present” to the fence. Circling after you present to the fence is scored as a refusal. At the end of the Eventing section of the USEF rulebook (available on line) there are a bunch of diagrams showing which routes are penalized and which are not.
But , for the purposes of discussion, there are many ways to school the water without circling. Suppose the water jump is square, and the front is flagged as a jump. If you want to school it you can approach from the right side. go through the water and leave on the left side. then turn left 3 times to approach the flagged obstacle straight on. Or you can approach from the right, get into the water. make a U-turn (turning left). leave from the right side. and then make 3 right turns to approach the flagged obstacle straight on
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Thank you, I will go look for this.
Yes and no.
Every water jump has to have both an entry and an exit. In principle you can go around the jump to the “exit” side, and “get your feet wet” there. But it the entire exit side is revetted, that doesn’t help much. And sometimes it i just not practical to get to the exit side.
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Could be. It was not an event I was at, it was an example that was described to us at one of our TD Continuing Education Courses. I am in Area II. The last time I competed in a Horse Trial at GMHA the cross country course was at the top of the mountain.
ETA - But I THINK they said it happened at the AEC.
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I have a shot of myself doing this… this was 4 years ago so excuse my floppy sloppy riding… doing better now 
I did this for a season, was a game changer for her. Went from always wanting a “peek” to never hesitating.
FullSizeRender
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They can yell it all they want, but is is still the jump judge’s decision (if supported by the TD) that determines if the rider HAS or has not presented.
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I think THOSE posters were talking about (not) crossing their own path between the elements of a combination (e.g., 8A, 8B). Once you present to a combination, you are considered to have presented to all the elements. Again, check the diagrams at the end of the eventing section of the rule book for how different tracks through a combination are scored.
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Yup… and a very good visual representation to my point above that the water is not always flagged - but the flagged jumps are otherwise inaccessible or almost inaccessible without going through water. That’s very similar to what I did one year at King Oak, where the fences were a stride before water and a stride out of water, and I had a horse who hated water but was bold as hell to anything else. I did not want his refusal of water to be misconstrued as a refusal to the fence, so I went through the water itself, jumped out (bank up IIRC), and then presented to the combination just fine.
Riders just need to be savvy of whether or not the WATER ENTRY is flagged. At the lower levels here it is very common to have the whole water entry flagged as a “jump” - which means if you go through it you can only go through it once, and make sure not to do it backwards…
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Thank you @Janet for the explanations (I was hoping you would weigh in, and considered tagging you!), Janet is the “rules guru” around here for those who weren’t aware… 
Ha, yeah - I remember the “year of the cobalt blue water” at Surefire! LOTS of issues there, so it figures that some riders would try to get their horses into that water complex before having to drop into it - makes sense.
(As a LL coach I make it a point to learn all the rules and stay current on them, there are multitudinous ways to get the Big E, so knowledge is power!)
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@Janet, the prelim jump was at the right side of the water complex, jump, 2 strides, drop down into the water. Where riders were going thru was thru the flags to the left of the prelim entry which was flagged at a lower level. Taking this a step further, I assume it is also ok to jump a lower level jump, circle back and then jump your jump on course.
Yes, at least under US rules.
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There was a poster who said that as a jump judge she gave a rider a refusal for circling in the water before going to her obstacle. She said they crossed their line, but she was not clear about whether it was part of a combination. If it wasn’t, then I’m not sure why it was counted as a refusal.
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Interesting that the Canadian rules specifically disallow it. I wonder about British eventing.
(And a good reminder that we should be better about clarifying which country’s set of rules we’re discussing…)
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IIRC prior to the DR penalty, the US rules had a few iterations of what you could/couldn’t jump outside your course.
At one point you could not jump fences that weren’t flagged (presumably to prevent people from schooling unsafe jumps that hadn’t been touched in decades), or those above the level. Now the DR can be applied to bad judgment.
FWIW I did it at prelim last fall at Morven, and called “circling,” not so much to convince the jump judge, but to make spectators aware. I checked with the TD prior and while it’s legal, she did point out that your chances of getting a DR are much higher when you are not where people expect you. The coast may be clear when you walk the course, or even 2 minutes before your turn, but if a spectator/photographer/course walker is in the way of your plans, you need to quickly rethink so as not to get a DR.
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All I have to add to this is that I jumped a bank wrong once…The way the bank was set up was an option but also you basically turned left, did the down back and then did a U-Turn to keep going. I got screwed up, went to far right, turned right over the bank and kept going because that made more sense to me.
Luckily, this was a really low-key schooling show and I think somehow it was just assumed I didn’t mean it and was forgiven.
Another time, I went over say jump 10(forget the exact numbers…) came around, saw 12 and knew 11 was lurking somewhere but I couldn’t find it. This was BN and 11 happened to be a small log in a bit of a hollow near a bit of a hill. Luckily this was unrecognized and after a min or two (probably felt way longer than it was) of trotting around in circles, the jump judge pointed it out to me. I know you are supposed to assist…but I would have been out there all day!
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