You do realize there were SEVEN judges? And again, the collected walk is ONE of quite a few boxes… Here is a copy of the test.https://inside.fei.org/system/files/Grand%20Prix%20Freestyle%202022.pdf
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Look, take it up with the Dressage Radio podcasters not me. I have zero opinion on it. The takeaway is that if you are IW, your test is going to be so technically difficult and amazing that it doesn’t matter if your walk (or any other single movement for that matter) is bad, and I am fine with that.
Literally no one else, except one or two people on this planet, can manage that because they aren’t as good as she is. I have said repeatedly I loved every minute of the final I watched.
You seem to be reacting to something I’m not even saying. I am not going to keep repeating my comments to you. You can scroll up if you want and just read them again.
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If the walk was poor and scored in the 4s, how was it not scored correctly?
Personally I don’t put much stock in conspiracy theories lol.
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Ya, that’s kind of how dressage tests work at all levels. If all your other movements are very good, you are a skilled rider, and your horse has fantastic gaits except for the walk, your scores in all other areas and the collectives will make up for a low walk score. That’s kind of a nice thing about dressage. You can blow a whole movement without blowing the whole test.
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Honestly, I appreciate this conversation because it’s helping me ease up on myself a little bit 
I try so hard and maybe the perfectionism is something I need to let go of to just keep moving forward in this discipline. My dressage trainer is so lovely and supportive I really need to believe she means the nice things she says, haha.
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I think the walk in question wasn’t in the freestyle but the other class. I think the judge gave them a 5 or 6, however don’t quote me I’m going off having listened to the episode one time.
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It was both from what I remember? But the one in the FS was lower I think.
Is it fair to say that if you score a 4 in the walk that everything else has to be literally tops for you to qualify much less end up on the podium at the World Cup? I wonder how many other riders could pull that off? I’m inclined to think no one else could make up that kind of ground, but maybe it happens more often than I realize.
Reminds me of something that happened at one of the Olympics in figure skating… someone fell, but still medaled (maybe even won? Can’t remember) because the degree of difficulty was so high for her skate, while another skated a perfect performance but couldn’t catch her on points. Whoever said bleeding edge earlier is right. It’s not without controversy though! I remember a lot of people didn’t like it.
Have you looked at any FEI dressage tests? That might answer some of your questions. The walk doesn’t affect the score nearly as heavily as the other gaits because it’s only a couple movements. Here’s GP for example: https://inside.fei.org/system/files/Grand%20Prix%202022.pdf. The walk accounts for 40 points out of 460 (2 movements, each with a coefficient of 2). If you get two 4s your score is 12/460 = 2.6% lower than if you got two 10s. That’s not as big an impact as you seem to think? And realistically everyone else isn’t generally getting two 10s either. If your competition is getting two 8s you’re 8/460 = 1.7% below them, all else equal. So you just need to edge them out by 9 points distributed across the other 31 movements. Not insurmountable at all, no conspiracy theories required.
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2.6% is more than what separated SP and IW in the final (1.8%) So, yeah, that matters if we’re talking about trying to win medals. She pulled it off anyway because she is IW and the rest of her performance was just so strong…no conspiracy suggested by me.
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I’d like to point out, as a poster above did, that horses are not robots. You could do everything right, and the horse says “not today” or “not right now”.
They could say that for a myriad of reasons, from “I’m hurting somewhere” to “that kid in the stands with the cotton candy is suspicious.”
To see one poor walk and have your brain go ANYwhere near “wow, look at all the shortcuts this person may or may not have taken! Wonder what happens at home! Maybe abuse!” instead of “rats, something triggered him to get tense, I hope they nail it next time” is a YOU PROBLEM.
I’d hate to be your horse if that’s the level of perfection expected. That’s all I have to say.
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5 or 6 is a pretty crappy score for a rider at the World Cup, so again I don’t understand why anyone would say they weren’t marked down for a poor walk.
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This is completely unnecessary and an inaccurate summary of this conversation . But go ahead and have your feelings about it. Maybe go read the “behind in training” post if you want to see people who have real opinions about shortcut taking. The perfectionism I suffer from hurts me, not my horse—if anything, I beat myself up for not being good enough for her, which stops me from moving forward with the harder things. She’s perfectly happy not to be asked to do anything too hard as a result.
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No, that’s not accurate at all. The walk is only 2 movements out of the entire test.
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The math escapes me, so I guess this isn’t that unusual to see a score on an element that low for someone that medals? Literally just curious as I’ve never paid attention to the scoring much.
(This is in response to BigMama, forgot to quote)
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No it’s not
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Thanks. My show strategy is very much still “complete the test”, definitely not trying to win anything so I don’t really think about this.
You would have to listen to the explanation the judge gave on the podcast. It was interesting when compared to the other scores. I think it was more that score Vs the others.
Of course it was just a discussion and no one was dying on that hill. I think the overall score thoughts were more based on the music scores.
The math is a very important part of showing strategy if you are in it to win it.
Even in my show environment we have the concept of a “safe 6.” (If you are iffy about a movement, go for boring and conservative rather than pushing it and ending up with a 4… a well known phenomenon with extended gaits and hot horses :))
Sorry OP, your post has gone completely off the rails!
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the dreaded canter steps… or sticking a foot trying to make that walk piro as small as possible… or, dare I say it, the slightly lateral walk as you collect for the big clean canter depart.
And of course some would say these all points to shortcuts int he training; I mean, a horse at THAT level??? /S
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No.
But this thread is a very useful reminder that the dressage training pyramid is not a pyramid but a cycle and at each step we need to cycle back through the criteria. And that this won’t always happen.
I see stuff to criticize in some of the practices of upper level competition dressage, but it’s really important to also understand that other things that go suboptimal are not happening for the same reasons as they do to a beginner ammie on a green horse.
The top dressage horses are hot and forward behind what most of us want to ride, and they need to be on point to do tempi changes and piaffe and passage. Once you get a horse fired up to that extent there is a good chance that on that day in that milleu he may be jacked up enough to lose his relaxed walk. That’s why the walk is on the test, to see how well he comes back down from high energy activity. Not for a moment am I going to believe that horse doesn’t have a striding walk in him. He’s have washed out of training as a prospect if that was the case.
The reason the dressage pyramid is interesting is that it reminds us at every step we need to work through relaxation and rhythm and then connection and impulsion. But it’s so easy to lose either relaxation at one end, or impulsion at the other. Even, dare I say it, on a trail ride. In other words, those criteria apply everywhere. And the true test of the horse is how they behave when they get amped up. If your horse can have a fire breathing dragon day and still perform OK and listen to you, that’s an accomplishment. If you have to micromanage your horse so he never gets hot and loses his mind and kills you, there are possibly some holes in your training.
Anyhow, the GP FEI horses do not spend years at training and first perfecting their good boy behavior for us risk averse ammies. You can’t do what they do without an incredible amount of impulsion and forward, and it’s not drilled out of them doing Training tests. IMHO it’s almost a completely other discipline from lower level.dressage and even when horses go “up the levels” to GP, they do not become international competitor horses.
Ok just realized after I posted and continued reading that the topic had been pretty much already beaten into the ground 
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