There’s a recent episode on the dressage radio podcast where they have a guest judge do a critique of every ride in the freestyle. There’s a lot of good insight in it. I highly suggest a listen.
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Yeah. I know. Please show me where I did that? I literally said it was an unfortunate moment and they probably had a bad day. But without knowing more about them I wouldn’t assume anything.
And as for the walk I’m talking about, i went back in my browsing history and I was apparently watching footage from the WEL last night and it had the live scoring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g08bkJYw1OA.
So I’m not even talking about whoever you think I’m talking about. It was a ride by a European rider and I can’t remember who, but the walk was scored poorly and I could see why. ETA: Turns out the rider didn’t make it to Omaha —which makes more sense to me now.
I was just browsing through the feed to see if I could find anything that I thought looked off because when I actually watched some of it online this year, I didn’t see anything horrible. I landed on that as an example of something I wouldn’t expect to see at the World Cup, that made me scratch my head, as a way to illustrate the point I was making about expecting more from top riders than backyard riders, as one should.
I wasn’t talking about anyone specific, I have no clue who you were referring to. I shared that podcast because you will learn a lot about the scoring and dealing with these issues if you listen. But you gotta be interested in learning.
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DH posts such photos from time to time as part of her pretence that she cares about animal welfare and that her selective bullying of riders is actually all about protecting horses from abuse.
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That is good to know. It was floating around on Instagram. People were saying it was from Omaha but I couldn’t confirm that. I feel like if you’re going to say something is abuse and point out welfare violations, one should have the conviction to name names. In this case, it was cropped in and unidentifiable so I questioned whether it was actually something recent. Apparently it wasn’t.
I had a listen to this podcast on my way to the barn today.
Had a good laugh—interesting that a high music score can offset a dismal walk, and be enough to put someone (a very famous someone) on the podium. Not sure what to make of that! Of course, the degree of difficulty was very high for the entire test. So I guess if you’re attempting a test with a very high level of difficulty, the walk doesn’t matter. One of the podcasters seemed to think the result was questionable. That’s the thing about judged sports I guess. Figure skating has its own controversy like this.
I came home and rewatched the performance they were taking about again, because I hadn’t noticed anything to complain about when I watched it the first time (though I personally disliked the music) The walk they talked about did not look as bad as the one I saw at the WEL qualifier event I linked earlier (different pair), but it scored even lower.
To the other poster who asked about watching the final online with live scoring, it’s available on the clipmyhorse.tv/fei tv app. You have to pay.
Having had a horse who loved his job so got SO. EXCITED. that the movement AFTER the walk was coming up that he jigged every time- I can assure you with 100% certainty that the people who have bad walks in a test leave that arena and beat themselves up over it. They are not happy that walk jigged. They are not happy it went lateral. They will work like crazy to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But because they didn’t want to make the horse feel awful about it, they still patted their horse and said “well done”. To have some spectator say they didn’t care about the training process because something went wrong in a test? That’s incredibly disheartening to a competitor.
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If you read my comments from the beginning, it was just an example of something I saw that happened to not be at the WC final after all, and if it had been, I think people here would have had questions about whether the pair was ready for the WC final too. The judges obviously did. It was my mistake, and the format here makes things hard to follow — when people just take small quotes out of context the conversation really starts to go off the rails.
But to your comment: at the end of the day, the point of competition is to “test” your training, isn’t it? It is what it is. My horse always gets the pats and cookies, I get the homework (and the wine if it was really bad). If someone watching us thinks I have more work to do, they aren’t wrong to think so. I don’t really worry about that. I honestly worry most about letting my horse down by not sufficiently preparing her, failing to ride to the level of our preparation, or missing something with regard to her comfort. Never ever her fault.
As an aside, I do get the struggle with an eager horse. Mine is a tricky ride, smart and hot (very talented jumper, but when the fences get high, you really have to be in control, and she has a mind of her own on course—a big reason I decided to stop jumping and start dressage training with her). We work constantly on relaxing in transitions and keeping the walk consistent. Constantly! Collected walk still means it’s time for jump off 
I’m not sure we will ever have a nice collected walk at a show, but then I’m not shooting for the World Cup! Not in this lifetime. My big goals this year are canter transitions that don’t look like failed rocket launches. “Rapid unscheduled disassembly” is how I would describe most of our attempts 
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What you get in the show ring and what you get at home are frequently two radically different things. And some horses have a thing that they just don’t excel at. They aren’t robots.
There’s a reason collected walk doesn’t come in until quite a long way into the test scale. Its hard. Its easy to screw up. One probably shouldn’t be attempting it without quite a few other ducks in their rows.
I think we should be congratulating the many who do pull it off in the show ring rather than crucifying those who don’t. The judges do enough of that.
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Of course. I really didn’t crucify anyone! Like I said, the conversation went completely off the rails.
As a spectator and student I think it was fair to say it can be disheartening to see certain mistakes made at the highest level of the sport—because those are the mistakes we desperately are all training to stop making ourselves and if the “best” make them what hope do we have? ETA: maybe i could change my thinking on this though, because if they’re doing it too, maybe there is hope for me after all 
Someone asked for an example of what I was talking about and I mistook a ride at a qualifying event that didn’t cut mustard for a ride at the final. As I said, what I saw at the final was amazing.
If you ever see a dressage test from the higher levels, they will have just about the same judge’s comments, just with a higher score next to it.
There is no magpie about the higher levels they still struggle with the same things we do.
There is a saying that goes something like that.
A beginner rider wants to ride intermediate.
An intermediate rider wants to ride advanced.
An advanced rider wants to ride the basics
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Its all about the final numbers. I suppose you would DQ a horse who showed a marginal walk within a very difficult test when everything else is super.
In that test she does extended trot to piaffe piroette to canter piro to extended canter. Then extended canter-canter piro-piaffe piro-extended trot.
But in your eyes the moments of wald should eliminate her.
Can we compare this to other athletes at the top of their game - How about Shaq - we all know he couldnt sink a penalty shot most of the time. Should he ahve been dropped from the team?
Because the gaits component, as well as the other parts of the movement score, are of higher quality. But a miscount in the tempis is still a 4… even at WC.
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Yes but still may have the comment of wiggly centre line, just like in a walk trot test.
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I said absolutely no such thing.
ETA: The podcasters said IW wouldn’t have made it to the podium if her music score wasn’t a full point higher than SP’s though. Her test was harder by quite a bit so perhaps the judges couldn’t bear to knock her off the podium because of a low scoring walk. I have no opinion on it. Just thought it was interesting!
Do you know how FS tests are scored? (Or any test?). In a regular test. Each movement in a regular test gets a score and some have coefficients. So one movement is only 10 points out of 350 or 400 (depending on test). And of course almost no one ever gets a zero unless they completely leave a movement out. A few great movements will “balance out” one poor movement.
In a freestyle, each required element gets a score (the average of all attempts of it’s done more than once), the degree of difficulty for each movement is added, and that’s 50%. The other 50% is the artistic score, including how well the music fits the horse, how well the transitions between sections were done, etc.
donut is very possible to outside a “better” test with a super score and super choreography. A Judge would have to really do some mental computations to take a competitor “off the podium” as they score the test. Especially when there are SEVEN judges scoring the test.
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Thanks for the great explanation. To add to it for those who have asked, Riders also design their freestyles to highlight their horses strengths. You can see a ride where a horse that is a piaffe machine will have that movement featured. If a horse has a poor walk, the ride will show the bare minimum required. Putting in a “joker” will allow a rider to repeat a movement they messed up.
Again, I’m surprised some posters think a top pro will not have mistakes or issues when competing.
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Are you saying the judges didn’t score her walk down because they wanted her to be on the podium?
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No. The podcaster suggested the scored the music UP to compensate for the walk score. Walk was in the 4’s. Music was a 9.9? I believe SP’s music was scored at 8.8 or something around there. I had to rewatch after I listened to the podcast because I hadn’t even noticed the walk in question. There was a well respected judge going over the scores with the hosts. She pushed back a little on the suggestion and pointed out how much more difficult IWs freestyle was.
Lol. That would require some pretty fast mental math on the part of 7 different judges. Scoring freestyles is difficult enough already. It’s not like the movements are listed in a score sheet in the order in which they are ridden, as in other tests. And several movements are repeated, which requires keeping track of a score for each instance. There’s barely enough time to ensure no scores are missing, evaluate the artistic merit and write a comment or two before the next ride, let alone to calculate how many points a rider would need to remain on the podium and where that score could be inflated.
Not saying such things never happen - a very high level Canadian judge once (I have to say allegedly but I know the first-hand witnesses personally and know this is true) told others at an Olympic qualifier in which two riders were in very close contention for the spot she planned to bump up Rider A’s scores in the qualifier. Apparently she thought that horse would be a stronger contender at the Olympics than Rider B’s horse and wanted A to earn the team spot.
That’s a pretty rare situation. And to have all 7 judges do something like this at a World Cup seems beyond unlikely.
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They alluded to the fact that it’s a well known conspiracy theory that sometimes judges will score the music higher if they know there are lower marks in the test to balance out the results.
It wasn’t an accusation that this happened at the WC, just that a lot of people didn’t feel that particular walk was scored correctly and that the music score was generous. Which in turn relates to these questions on the walk. The score should reflect the actual movement ridden otherwise the rider has no drive to correct it.
The difficult score is done by computer so the judges can’t change that one.
It was an interesting discussion.
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