This
No, I don’t think this is a fair point to bring up. With the horse world being what it is, there is ultimately going to be overlap between judging and training. It wouldn’t be right to say that they can’t do the class because they have some association with the judge. In an ideal world, judges are unbiased. Does it always come off that way? No. But that doesn’t mean that someone should be barred from competing because of an association with the judge. I also don’t think that in this case specifically that she was given a re ride because of any preexisting relationship with the judge(s) - and that really isn’t a fair assumption to make.
If the judges offered the re-ride and it wasn’t prompted by being approached/asked by a mother/trainer of a prolific junior who rides with said judge I might agree with you.
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I guess my question is what if it happened to someone else? I would want to hear if there are trainers who have asked who have been denied re rides for a similar issue. If her trainers were just the only trainers who knew to ask… that’s a different story.
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That’s my question, too.
I think on a FB post, someone commented that either another kid got a reride or was offered one after there was a commotion in the stands because someone was choking?
Does anyone know anything about it? Without me digging deep into the replay?
I agree with the comments above that it’s too hard in the horse world to make rules avoiding a “conflict of interest.”
However, in terms of avoiding the appearance of leveraging an edge, I would hope trainers and connections are thinking long and hard about when and how they make use of a little-known rule or loophole. And maybe voluntarily consider taking a tough beat because it’s the sportsmanlike thing to do.
I say sportsmanlike here, because there’s enough of a question for there to be a discussion. There are no clearcut guidelines or a precedent set for this situation. Every single one of us seems to have had a sh*t happens moment like this kid, where we didn’t get the benefit of a reride.
I also maintain that there’s enough subjectivity in judging where penalties can be adjusted for context. Which is why I feel like we’re circling back to a discussion of how we do judging and how the judge’s decisions are or are not clear to competitors.
Wouldn’t discretion allow for lightening the penalty and allowing the kid to move on to round 2 based on the strengths of the rest of the rest of her trip? I also admit to wondering in the back of my mind, if the judges were loathe to give up an otherwise clear-cut leader?
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I think this is a terrible precedent to set. Distracting activity outside the ring has always been an unspoken element of course design, and now we’re going to have to quantify what is a “fair” distraction and what is “unfair”. I can only imagine what some of the more… “involved” parents will do with this, like berate, threaten and force their trainer to request a re-ride because somebody opened a soda pop in the middle of DD’s round.
Also think that this particular class, which will be the first of many medal finals for many of these kids, is somehow even worse. It was one of those true-blue “Welp, that’s horses!” moments, which is a core lesson of horsemanship and one that translates beautifully to real life. And real life rarely grants a re-ride.
How about when half the class shows under sunny skies and the other half in an absolute deluge? Was actually thinking about this as the usual summer storms rolled in and out of KY Summer. The result was a totally uneven playing field, but that’s horses. That’s the game.
And sometimes these anomalies work in your favor, like when you’re the underdog with the self-made pony/horse and shoestring budget and the well-known favorite has an uncharacteristic spook, leaving the door open for an upset. The inherent unpredictability of horses is perhaps the greatest equalizer in this sport.
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Exactly. Or your pony is used to being ridden in all weather and footing since you keep him at home, and the rain doesn’t phase him at all.
Or you picked up an OTTB who couldn’t care less about big equipment going by. Or you’re showing an ex-eventer who doesn’t blink at the huge shadow in front of the jump and pops over it like nothing.
This as well.
I would hate to see hunters go the way of dressage where you often have to hold your breath as a spectator or risk the wrath of the DQs.
I think it’s a slippery slope and terrible optics ie fairness. This is a case where the answer would’ve been “no, sorry, kiddo rides with me which makes this complicated and that’s horse showing for you” - along with a loudspeaker chastisement of the rude kids, as well as an official face to face scolding. In my opinion.
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I was at a show this winter where a kid got bucked off her pony in the closing circle because a bird kamakazied into its belly. No re-ride and she had a super round until then. It either has to be re-rides as standard procedure (as in the judge offers them automatically), or no re-rides unless extreme circumstances. Noise in the stands is to be expected, it’s part of the sport. They build aluminum stands- we all know they are there and that people will be walking on them, some more politely than others. Judge how the kid and pony recover, but to win on a re-ride is a terrible precedent.
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I mentioned upthread that I once lost a medal final because a commotion in the stands spooked my horse and he bolted 10 fences into a 12 fence course. Same horse and I ended up winning a local derby a few years later when the sun started setting late in the class the class and changed the shadows. Some very nice horses had uncharacteristic objections to the jumps when it was their time to go. My horse didn’t care. Linda Andrisani duly awarded him his lifetime highest hunter score and he won the class. (I heard that number when I walked out of the ring and said “now I can die!”)
I do think there are times when the judge and steward can agree that a disturbance was so significant and so out of the normal realm of expectation at a horse show (getting buzzed by a helicopter landing in the next field!) to grant a re-ride to one single pair, because they were competing under unexpectedly different conditions than the rest of the class and those conditions are not a predictable part of horse showing. Or the disturbance impacted the entire class in a way that prevented the class from being able to be judged (the entire fire company comes blazing by with lights and sirens and the short stirrup WTC class all takes off with kids screaming at the top of their lungs. Judge dismissed the class, we did a ring drag, and 10 minutes later, when everyone had caught their breath and calmed down, we re-ran the class.) But a disturbance that is within the realm of the normal horse show experience, like spectators existing and children being children, is a crap happens. The loud kids presumably didn’t dress in clown costumes and somersault into the ring.
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I will never forget my experience at my very first rated (B) hunter show. This story is made particularly amusing by the fact that the horse I was riding was 3/4 Arabian.
We were showing in the old KHP “indoor” that is really a covered arena with garage doors along the mezzanine. It was a really nice September day, so all those doors were rolled up to let the fresh air in. Except that the remnants of a tropical storm were begging to blow in…We were just finishing up the under saddle class of our division. I was cantering down the long side towards the holding area, right between the outside line of jumps and the judge. Suddenly, a huge gust of wind TOSSED all the vendor tables off the mezzanine into the stands, right as the power went off in the arena.
Cue mayhem. Horses and people scattered in every direction. Bless my little 15 hand notoriously spooky gelding’s heart for coming through when it counted. He lifted his head to see what was happening outside the arena but just kept happily cantering along until I asked him to stop. When the dust settled, we were the only entry in the class that had managed to remain both mounted and in the arena. 
We won that class (he was a really nice mover and usually in the top of our under saddles, so I’m sure that wasn’t entirely about the disaster) and ended up champion in our division. 
On the way back to the barn, he spooked out from underneath me because there was a funny looking rock beside the path. 
That day was a classic example of his personality in a nutshell!
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I’ve had a couple of horses that spooked for the hellu-vit, but were rock steady when serious stuff happened. And I’ve also had several horses that were born rock steady, in my next life I hope we’re together for eternity.
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When I was 13 the SPRINKLER SYSTEM FOR THE RING WENT OFF during my hunter round. My horse lost. his. mind. I did not get a re-ride :(
I wish they did them MORE often.
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Whole lot of horse people live in Wellington. Trainers, owners, riders, show management.
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On the topic of re rides, I was at a show last year where the five year old jumpers were showing. A golf cart came barreling out from behind the judges stand straight towards the horse. This poor five year old slammed on the brakes, then picked up the canter again, and continued his round.
The rider later mentioned something about the show not allowing golf carts to take that path while people were showing. She was shot down and told she could have asked for a reride if it affected her round that much. So I guess it’s up to the show if you can request them.
If it was a dressage test as part of a Horse Trial, you can STILL get back on and finish the test.
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That’s nuts! Noise is expected, sprinklers are not. You should have been offered a re-ride.
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Also at a dressage show. I was showing at twilight at LAEC in one of the ovals. Per USEF regulations they’d turned on the arena lights at the beginning of the class. But the lights for all the stuff around the ring were off when I started my test. My horse was just fine with being surrounded by darkness while riding in our lighted ring. And then some genius turned on all the lights around the ring and my horse realized there was a whole world out there. And went WTAF. Nothing dramatic, but enough to ruin a test. But not as bad as sprinklers.
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The response to disaster in the ring due to outside forces used to be to track down the person responsible for the kid, dog, vehicle etc that caused the issue and present them with your show bill.
A reride is a terrible precedent.
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Is there video showing this “several children went barreling down the stairs of the Alltech Arena”
Just for my own morbid curiosity about what exactly happened. Short of an all out fistfight that was literally flowing out of the stands and into the ring, I’m puzzled at how this disruption (rude though it may have been) is any different than the usual disruptions one sees at shows (frustrating as they are).
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I was going to say, I’ve never had a re-ride, but I have had a flat class paid for by someone else after their dog ran into the ring. I was on an old schoolmaster pony who didn’t care, but had to pull up to avoid stepping on the dog.
The only actual re-ride I’ve seen was a friend who was somehow allowed to do a full hunter round while the judge was in the bathroom. She got to redo it once there was a judge to judge her.
I don’t love re-rides for somewhat expected horse show things. The playing field is never perfectly even. Sometimes half the class has to show in the pouring rain and the other half gets sunshine. Sometimes you have to warm up twice because the ring gets held up by a bad fall. Sometimes you’re stuck going early with big shadows that clear for the latter half of the group.
Allowing re-rides because the round wasn’t judged/timed or because a change was made to the course/ring part way through is fine with me.
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