… maybe the dressage freestyle should take a few lessons from the reining freestyle :yes: if only for showmanship.
this video is so fun… could you imagine seeing someone down centerline? :lol:
I especially like the no handed spins!!! WHILE the rider is spinning his hat! :yes: amazing
It is super cool!
I always wondered why dressage crowds don’t whoop and holler during freestyle. Those horses are used to the applause after they perform, why not during.
There is nothing crazier than freestyle reining night…
On the same Youtube page was Anky von Grundsven doing the reining freestyle - to “America” from West Side story - THAT was fun. I’m still pinching myself though.
they are always so much fun to watch!
If people spent their time screaming and hollering during a dressage test, they’d likely miss some pretty significant movements/transitions. I was watching the freestyle dressage, and had I been on my feet screaming, I wouldn’t have caught the 1/2 stride late change behind, or the tiny disobedience in the upward transition, or the dropped hind end in the ____…
Reining is a different kind of finesse. Less fluidity. More time to recover and settle between movements. As such, the casual exhibitor needs to be far less focused to get a decent idea of where the score is coming from.
[QUOTE=FrenchFrytheEqHorse;5137896]
If people spent their time screaming and hollering during a dressage test, they’d likely miss some pretty significant movements/transitions. I was watching the freestyle dressage, and had I been on my feet screaming, I wouldn’t have caught the 1/2 stride late change behind, or the tiny disobedience in the upward transition, or the dropped hind end in the ____…
Reining is a different kind of finesse. Less fluidity. More time to recover and settle between movements. As such, the casual exhibitor needs to be far less focused to get a decent idea of where the score is coming from.[/QUOTE]
:lol: :lol: :lol:
Maybe you think so because you don’t have an educated eye for reining?
Reining definitively is different, you may miss that extra step that made your beautiful spin an overspin, that one inside foot backed half a step, the front bobbed at the 3/4 once, the front feet hopped, didn’t cross cleary over when starting the second spin, the back didn’t stay even on a turn around after a stop, the back ended on a half step, the horse opened his mouth that once, the circles were uneven in rythm, the rider had to correct a shoulder trying to drift, the horse lost a smidgen of self carriage and the lope became uneven, the change was hurried for one step before coming back to hand, and a million other little details.
All that and I am a beginner at reining, you ought to hear my friend the reining trainer comment on a run.
We don’t know how little we know, until we start to learn a little bit, do we.
Sorry if for some reason, I implied reining was less complicated than dressage. Not my intention. My point is, reiners DO get time to settle, think, and plan their next movement. Period. The rider recovers. The horse recovers. And the crowd recovers. It looks like a lot of fun.
Dressage is just too “continuous” to spend time yelling and screaming during a test. Particularly during freestyle, where it’s pretty important to watch AND listen.
hmmm, i agree with you to an extent… and do love watching the dressage freestyles too. But… i think it’d bring dressage as a sport to a general audience too :yes:
Dressage is FUN!! we should showcase that, and not the steretypical dressage-nitpicking-look-down-your-nose sport that its depicted as.
i can see both sides of the equation, but personally… would love to see the showmanship a little more in dressage (can you say juan and fuego) could you imagine if he’d been able to really showcase his showmanship to get a crowd going?!
sometimes i think dressage folks can be a little to posh :winkgrin: serve some red wine at the freestyles and really give the riders support!!! just for fun of course.
Having been to the QH Congress Reining Freestyles, I must say that most of the crowd around me at WEG thought I had lost.my.mind during the reining, when I whistled, yelled, clapped, whooped and (gasp), stood UP!.
That crowd was comatose, compared to what you find at Congress. They warmed up a bit towards the end, which was great.
I didn’t know that AvG was going to do a reining FS that night. I was thrilled when she came inand she did a pretty good job. In my head I kept saying…“Let go. LET GO!”, and if she had, that well-trained horse she was on would have taken care of her and she would have had a fantastic go. As it was, his ears were pinned, he missed some changes and was quite unhappy until she actually let him do his job. You could almost see him thinking “It’s about freaking TIME you let go of that rein, lady!”
Not to say she didn’t do a good job. She did. I was pleasantly surprised after the videos I had seen. She even did a couple of lovely canter pirouettes on him…better than some I saw in the dressage FS! I thought it was great that she came out and did her thing.
If you want REAL fun? Go to the QH Congress Reining FS. But buy your tickets now for next year.
NJR
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