YES! I say this all the time about a lot of stuff!
It doesn’t need wifi, or cell phones. The readers would need a battery, I think. Think more barcode scanner passing through an area than signal.
You can use wifi though, but more to load/organize the lists and get them to volunteers for previewing.
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We use Motorolas at work. Three seconds is unnecessary; half a second is fine (for ours). Granted ours are LEO spec, a cheaper model might be different.
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this does seem insane
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agreed. i think the people assuming this would be easy to implement have not spent much time behind the scenes at horse shows or spent much time organizing…
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Came here to say both of these things…!
I also feel the need to point out that the COTH article glorifying the fact that she was back competing 4 weeks after giving birth mentioned that she has people warm up her horses before they jump at home…so she figured why not do it at shows too? It just rubs me the wrong way. All of it.
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I dont’ see any reason to institute any rule change based on an incorrect accusation of a rider having a groom warm up their horse. The simple truth is both groom and rider were competing in the 2*, and the groom was competing on the horse they personally own.
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I don’t know her or anything about this situation, but this part of the article made me sad for her and all the other pros (especially women, but everyone) trying to “make it”:
“I worked so hard my whole career, like with the sales business, and all that was leading towards getting a good group of owners and good group of horses, and I finally got there,” she said. “And I don’t want to lose it, right? I’m so easily replaceable. There’s a million other me’s, so I just don’t want to lose everything I worked toward, so I kept going as long as I physically could.”
If someone with her record feels so easily replaceable that she has to strain her physical limits to this extent before and after the birth of her child… wow.
Link to article since I had to look it up again: https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/new-mom-caroline-pamukcu-proves-shes-back-on-top-at-bouckaert-farm/
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I have not read that article, but I believe I heard Boyd Martin say at a clinic last year that a lot of the time, he has people warming up the horses he rides at home before he jumps them.
I think in his case, it’s just a question of how many hours there are in the day and how many horses there are in the barn.
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Lots of upper level riders have a groom or working student trot/hack/maybe light flat a horse to warm up before they get on to school. There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing that at home and it’s probably better than some of the alternatives.
Obviously not cool to do it in violation of the rules at the show.
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As is being mentioned above, this is common in programs where one trainer is riding many horses. It is how they maintain a training program that size.
Eventing doesn’t allow anyone other than the competitor to ride the horse in competition, but almost every other discipline does allow it. So in eventing, having others warm up the horse is just at home, whereas with other disciplines it’s common in all locations. Owners know their warm-up riders as well as their trainer.
Using other riders to maintain the part of the program that isn’t as sensitive to the ride is, frankly, key to maintaining an income level from having horses boarding and training with them that makes horse training worth doing at all. It is not an easy way to make a living.
Riding is a physical effort. The human body can only do so much in a day, day after day. Especially after years and years of work as a pro trainer.
Many pro trainers in many disciplines have staff or working students warming up the horses that the ‘name’ trainer will ride after warm-up.
The trainer is the most valuable rider, in the difference that they make in the horse. But, it isn’t that important that they do the warm-up. They can teach competent riders how to get the horse ready for a short focused session with the one truly gifted rider in the barn, the pro.
There are trainers who spend only 15, maybe 20 minutes, per horse, for 10 +/- horses per day. But after that 15 minutes, the horse rides like a different animal. The effect is more significant than the other riders and it lasts longer, especially when this happens four times a week or so.
There are trainers who are riding three+ horses per hour for some number of hours per day, on most of their working days at home. And teaching some advanced lessons as well. There is one I’m aware of who will ride 10 horses and teach 5 lessons/coaching-sessions on a normal day, from oh-dark-thirty to way-past-dark. Fifteen minutes per horse, 30 minutes per human lesson, figure the math on the trainer’s day with only brief breaks.
And how much physical effort that is, several days per week. The more horses in training they have in the barn, the greater their earnings, but also the more physical work and coordination is involved. While showing positive results.
It is rare that an owner doesn’t know that this is the routine for their horse. An owner shouldn’t be surprised at this routine, while their horse is in a training barn. Any discipline.
And the ‘name’ trainer may be juggling the competition schedule that has them away from the home barn for periods of time. They have pressure to maintain their competition record to maintain their level of business. Plus just being out and being seen, keeps them relevant to their base of potential customers.
If clients are not satisfied with the progress their horse is making, not satisfied with the end result when they get the horse back, then depending on where they live, yes there are other trainers to choose with a good reputation. Plus the higher-end clients can send their horses to trainers in other parts of the country. Thus expanding the world of competitors, for each trainer.
IMO it is profoundly sexist to judge a female trainer more harshly than the many generations of male trainers who do the same thing. Female trainers who are also incorporating a pregnancy into their realm. While staying relevant to their customer base. The male riders also ‘have’ children but they don’t deal in the same way with the impact of pregnancy, childbirth, and frankly baby and child care later.
Figuring out how to make their whole life work out for them is how female trainers who want a family manage to maintain their riding careers. As is the case in any career field for any woman who also wants her own family, in or out of a barn.
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Yep I totally get that and don’t have a problem with it at all, I was referencing her comment about it in the article because she referred to it as “cheating”.
My recently postpartum brain took it to mean that she is not yet fit enough to do it herself. Which made me wonder why she had that many horses entered at an FEI that quickly. I also can’t imagine riding a week after giving birth but to each their own!
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Yep I totally agree and have no issue with it happening at home, only so many hours in a day!
Doing it at shows is a whole ‘nother can of worms…back in the good old days there was a limit to the number of horses per rider at events. Now some riders will have 8-10+ which is just mind boggling.
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As I know you know well … Career-oriented child-bearing women everywhere have to figure out what they can afford to do, as well as what they can physically do, around having both a child and a career. Given whatever financial cushion their job offers for childbirth. Sometimes the ideal is not an option for them, based on whatever is the situation at work and at home.
I have no idea about this rider. But people seem to be harshly second-guessing her choices, based on the kind of pressures that society typically puts on women. Whatever their career.
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Man, women really cannot win. I don’t know CP/have any knowledge of her as a competitor, but I really respected her posts on social media thanking Sharon White for jumping her horses in the final weeks of her pregnancy, and her posts thanking her team for getting her back so quickly. She does this professionally, the season is just starting, she wants to protect what she’s built, so she works like hell and leans on her village to get back in the saddle - what’s wrong with “glorifying” that? Ros Canter did it. My personal trainer (an UL eventer with two small children and one four star horse) had to do it. It would be wonderful if women did not HAVE to do it, but the reality of the sport is that they do (a discussion of the FEI’s maternity leave policy would probably be more interesting than putting a magnifying glass on one woman’s choices).
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Exactly this.
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Jonelle Price took a year off of competition for her first pregnancy, which she described as ‘easy’, but says she was riding 2 or 3 times a day right up until the birth.
Jonelle was back on a horse one week after her first childbirth to prepare for Badminton about 7 months away. She won that next Badminton in 2018.
Her comment on having children …
“But if if didn’t happen then, possibly it would not have happened. The time when we should have been thinking about a family, our careers had just started to gather momentum. I’d definitely been dragging my feet about it.”
Interview with Jonelle – scroll down for her comments on having children while maintaining her highly competitive riding career. She’s one of the elite eventers in the world.
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agree to all of this. it is not unethical to have assistants and working students warming horses up, with the main trainer riding only 15-20 min. honestly preferable to lots of lunging, which is what plenty of other training programs rely heavily on. and like you said, that 15 min from the pro, after the horse is already warmed up, is incredibly effective.
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My first job in eventing in the 90s was lunging and hacking horses to warm them up for a BNT before his rides at home…
…back when we actually paid people for the work instead of just bringing on umpteen working students to do it for free.
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