I see a person who shows locally having a lot of trouble at the 1.10m and then oddly moved up to the 1.20m. By trouble I mean a lot of eliminations, some falls or rounds with 20 or 30+ faults. This situation is of course none of my business, but now I’m wondering if there is a rule about this? It seems wild that there are rules about the color of our clothes, but nothing to say that if you can’t make it around safely at one height that you can’t move up?
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No need to show competency. The only restrictions are sometimes cross-entry restrictions, but those are on a per-show basis.
There are rules for this in Europe.
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As far as I’m aware eventing is the only discipline with rules like this. To run Modified (3’5) and up both horse and rider have to have competed at the previous level a certain number of times staying under a certain number of penalties in each phase: https://useventing.com/news-media/news/rule-refresher-what-minimum-eligibility-requirements-mer-do-i-need-to-meet
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It’s interesting that it’s not. It seems like an obvious one in terms of horse welfare. It is probably usually handled by trainers making good choices but clearly not always
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This is an interesting article on the subject, written at the end of the Thermal circuit last year by Hope Glynn. I am pretty sure that I watched the same 1.2-m class that she did. 
https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/trainers-we-have-to-do-better-for-our-horses-and-riders/
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This is an absolutely stellar article. Thank you.
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Unfortunately for the horse, no.
I live in the PNW and there is a…”trainer” like this. It’s so hard to watch.
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Thanks for posting the article. Lots of great points but this hit the crux of it
“The direction of the sport is pushing us toward more and more money spent on horses, and less and less time spent on horsemanship, and even less consideration of what is best for the horse”.
Why is it such a novel idea to do well and be successful at one height before moving up? Now it seems - we got around the course so we’re moving up at the next show.
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Combined Driving has a system in place that is similar to eventing-have to complete so many events at training level with certain scores achieved before moving onto prelim. etc. Once you hit the higher levels, you don’t have to follow those rules as you will have theoretically proven that you can, in fact, competently drive a horse. It works pretty well and doesn’t seem terribly difficult to enforce.
I have to say, imo, the H/J world is not famous for putting the horse first.
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As a person who just finished about the most stressful 16 months of competing to complete my 1*, 2* and now finally my 3* qualifications, I can assure you “qualifying” never ends until you get to the highest level!
And while that’s FEI, the same holds true for USEF advanced national classes although I’m not sure they are monitored like the FEI. The app won’t let you enter if you don’t have the level approved in the FEI database.
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Congrats! That’s a lot of work and a huge accomplishment!!! I’m jealous! I was thinking more of the drivers who, once accomplished, are able to enter a division like prelim. with out doing the training first. Sorry for my lack of clarity!
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Thanks, it definitely hits one of the top accomplishments in my long career showing in many disciplines. But to be fair, the FEI has now declared me capable of entering a 4 horse (team) in any 3* even though on a good day I’m barely keeping up on my rein aids with 1 pony in marathon, so the system is not without flaws! 
But to the point of this thread, there is a system and you do have to demonstrate that you did not die at any given level in order to move up to the next one. I think is a good idea for all of us.
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Eventing is the opposite - there are no MERs at the lower levels, but then there are rules all the way to the top of the national levels. Horse and rider must have a certain number of qualifying runs separately and as a combination; riders with a certain number of MERs themselves can skip the combination MER as long as the horse still has enough with other riders. There are also some minor exceptions on how recent the MERs have to be for riders with a long history, but other than that there are no exceptions no matter how much experience you have. I imagine a lot of the experienced upper level riders find it annoying, but given how high the stakes are it makes sense to me. There have been discussions on incorporating MERs at the lower levels but that gets complicated and expensive, and not every horse/rider combo is going to need the same path to start out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if those get introduced soon anyway.
I don’t think the jumper ring needs a system as strict as eventing has, and frankly move-up requirements wouldn’t address the lower levels where the most terrifying jumper rounds happen, but having some kind of bare miniumum box to check is not a bad idea.
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To be fair, the most dangerous thing out there is a newb in driving (but the qualifying req. are through all the levels).
Also, all the eventers I’ve ever met thought CDE Marathon was the “hold my beer” version of cross country
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I didn’t say either discipline was more or less dangerous than the other, I was just pointing out the difference in how they manage qualifications 
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Humor. It was humor.
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