Wealthy people are not going to stop paying six figures for horses that they can afford to ship up and down the east coast all year to attend weeks and months long show circuits just because some people can’t afford it. Six figure horses are not going to be sold for four or five figures so that everyone can buy one. Haulers are not going to volunteer their services for free so that riders of lesser financial means can get to more shows or clinics. No amount of comments from judges is going to change that. Non-wealthy people have to accept that they are not likely to ever be able to live like wealthy people and find ways to enjoy their horses within their means. I have suggested some ways that can be accomplished - it doesn’t matter if they or new or not. What matters is whether you want to take advantage of opportunities that are available to you or if you would rather complain about it on the internet.
I’ve judged schooling shows and I certainly agree that with the time allotted to a given round and the number of rounds in a day, this is not feasible for a judge to do themselves.
However, I’ve also scribed for dressage judges and for the dressage sportif phase of ANRC hunt-seat competition, and I would absolutely support the additional cost to provide a scribe for each hunter and equitation judge to facilitate this. (And also, I support having fewer classes at the horse show so the judges can have enough of a breather between rounds to put together a complete and coherent feedback phrase for the scribe, and yes, I know that fewer classes at the show means fewer people paying the fees that support the show, which means increased costs.)
I’d also support this only being for certain classes. The average short-stirrup rider is not as likely to get benefit out of contextualized numerical scoring than, say, a Children’s Hunter, A/O, or Maclay rider.
I mean, life isn’t fair.
And it’s still a Hunter Derby; I don’t think the purpose was to have mediocre horses beating fancier ones because hey, they deserve a blue ribbon sometimes too.
This is all starting to sound like that whole “everyone gets a prize no matter what so that no one feels bad about themselves” thing. Le sigh indeed.
I’ve been taking lessons at home. My friend has her own truck and trailer and generously lets us have a spot to things.
I took my horse to 14 different shows/schoolings/horse trials this summer (varied from h/j shows, to horse trials, to dressage or cross country schoolings). I had a trainer at 6, no trainer for 8.
When my trainer wasn’t there, I’d let her know how it went in our next lesson. We’d review video of rounds or discuss what I liked/didn’t like and what we wanted to work on at home. That is how I got my feedback.
As an eventer, if you go without a trainer you’re only getting feedback in one phase anyway. Without a trainer, how are you getting feedback on how to prevent the rail you had in the show jumping round, or the refusal you had in your cross country round?
So the solution for people who might not get feedback in the form of a ribbon because they can’t afford to compete with the big guns is to… make shows more expensive?
Every reason that has been given in this thread so far of why hunter showers shouldn’t expect a judge’s feedback on their rounds is why I do not show hunters – even though it is the most available type of hunt seat horse activity in my area.
I think that many of the concepts taught by hunter showing of how to ride turns and lines around a jump course are extremely valuable to good horsemanship. I think there are many very nice people involved in hunters.
But I cannot deal with the culture of hunter showing. So I don’t show hunters. Based on many conversations with riders, I am not the only one.
Wow. This may well be the canyon-divide between hunter showing and so many other kinds of sport. Dressage provides exactly this level of feedback - in writing. For a large number of rides on a given day.
A horse show is a lesson, for many of us. Why else would I go? I enjoy the social aspects and being out in the horsey setting, but I can get that at many other less-involved venues.
If an exhibition that ranks the exhibits does not have some form of feedback giving even a general idea of why the opinion made selections the way it did, that was a waste of an exhibition. I miss the learning opportunity. Maybe the judge decided based on “it was prettiest” or “because I liked it”. The rankings without feedback don’t teach the exhibitor or the discipline what ‘quality’ means. (A complaint I also have of judged art exhibits with no judge’s feedback.)
Feedback is a reasonable thing to do, dressage judges do it every weekend, as do many other judged sports. If hunter showing want to see themselves as too elevated to be bothered, to confine themselves only to the silo of their trainer’s pov, that’s fine, that’s their prerogative - but it undermines the status as a ‘sport’ if spectators and exhibitors don’t know the reasons for the placings.
I’m not a hunter show person. Both of these remarks are so weird to me I don’t even know where to start. I am not in a cult where only my trainer/clinician has an opinion that matters. I am not trying to ride my horse just to please my trainer.
The purpose of a show is to get a different opinion from the judge, a valued, knowledgeable individual. Otherwise why go? That’s my pov.
Diverse opinions on riding are necessary to truly improve one’s skill as a rider, not just as an exhibitor. It also teaches people to be able to evaluate opinions and decide for themselves which are helping and which are not. To think, in short.
I’m guessing that if the trainer decides they have a different opinion that does the judge, the trainer is always right and the judge is always wrong?
That is a tunnel-vision approach to life, not just to horses, riding and showing.
I already paid and traveled to go to the show to get the judge’s opinion there.
I am happy to take advantage of clinics and so forth. But getting feedback on a video of what happened during that ride on show day is not the purpose of a clinic. Plus it is not timely to the show day ride - the feedback was most needed on that day.
Your suggestion makes no sense as it erroneously conflates the purpose of a clinic and the purpose of a show.
You are suggesting that the feedback problem is solved by piling more travel and expense and time on top of the considerable amount already going to showing – just to get the feedback that I wanted while at the show, and which can no longer be provided in an accurate and timely manner.
Are the dressage judges doing that for 200 rides in one ring on one day? Unfortunately, that number is not unheard of at a hunter show for one ring on one day.
This is what I want to know. The events I’ve been to, there are 2 or 3 dressage judges and the rings run for what would be considered a half day (or less) at a hunter show. Maybe thats not standard, which is what I’m curious about.
I conflated a couple of points into a single sentence.
- I think that when a horse show lasts 12 hours, no one is having any fun, and the judge cannot possibly do their best work under such circumstances.
- Judges who are asked to work a packed day are going to outright make mistakes, no matter how good they are. (To wit: the disaster of the dotted line at THIS finals last year.)
- For a variety of reasons, I support making sure horse shows don’t run longer than 8-10 hours. It’s better for the horses and it’s better for the people.
- That requires that the horse show runs longer in the week (= longer facility rental fees,) has more rings (= larger facilities cost more to equip and maintain + staff costs,) or doesn’t offer as many classes (= not as many people paying the fees.)
- I would rather shorten the day by not offering a bajillion 2’6" warmup sections, because requiring a larger facility to host a horse show just restricts the pool of who can offer a horse show.
- Yeah, that means somebody who would ride in the 2’6" USHJA whatever is not going to have a class.
- That is the purpose of a B or C show, or a local/regional circuit. Yes, I know those shows are either dead or moribund in many areas of the country. Yes, I know why. Yes, I know the problem is systemic. Yes, that’s a whole 'nother thread.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for judges to say “I want to provide a quality product and the fees that I am being paid to do it are not commensurate with the amount of time I’m putting into it or my level of expertise.” And I don’t think it’s unreasonable for exhibitors to say “I am paying a boodle for this $2 ribbon and I’d like a more transparent scoring system that helps me understand why I got it.” These things aren’t mutually exclusive.
That may be your point of view but that is emphatically not the point of a hunter show. The point of a hunter show is to pin the horse that performed the best. The point of going to try to perform the best. You are paying to compete.
I don’t know what clinics are like where you live, but in my neck of the woods, a trainer or judge gets hired by a barn to travel to that barn and teach riders on horses over the course of a day or two, or maybe more. Clinicians don’t watch videos during a clinic. Riders take the feedback they get from the clinician and practice it at home in an effort to improve their performances at shows.
Putting feedback into practice rarely produces immediate results. Unless it’s something simple like “tighten your girth so you don’t fall off the side of your horse over the first jump”, a judge’s feedback is unlikely to be helpful at the same show. “Your changes are consistently sticky” and “you need to maintain better pace throughout your round” are not likely to be fixed in the time between someone’s first and second rounds at a show. And if your trainer can’t recognize that your changes are sticky or that you need to maintain better pace throughout your round, you need a new trainer, not feedback from the judge.
What if the trainer is wrong?
Isn’t the judge’s feedback the best ruler for a rider to use to evaluate their trainer’s effectiveness?
YES. That is the information the rider needs at the moment the rider can get the most out of it.
Information that the trainer may or may not also be providing! The way to find out that one’s trainer has a different idea of ‘pace’ than does a judge, who is the greater authority, per the system. That’s why they are judging.
The judge’s feedback is the key and core solution.
The judge is the higher authority on what is correct, as decided by the sport.
The entire purpose of the effort, training, time, money etc. to show is to get the judge’s opinion - the WHY they ranked in the order they did. That is the entire point of the organization.
Isn’t it? If not, what is the point of showing?
What is the definition of “hangs a knee”? And the other things. Different people place different levels of importance of the various elements of a score.
A judge is a second pair of eyes on a trainer’s opinion. A potential contradiction of bad information or no information coming from a trainer. Otherwise the rider is may very well not know, in the information silo of a trainer.
One problem for riders is how to know that one does not have a good trainer. How many years do they invest in a particular trainer before they twig to futility? While listening to trainer excuses such as “other rider has more expensive horse” or even “guess the judge doesn’t like chestnuts” (I’ve heard that one from a pro trainer) or “bad judge, they don’t know what they are doing”.
One potential answer is go to a show and find out that the judge’s opinion shows what the trainer is missing - except I don’t get information on what the judge saw.
Maybe my trainer places no importance on knees, says nothing about my horse’s bad form … and I don’t know that he has bad form. I don’t know what is truly correct because My Trainer is the only opinion I ever hear.
A judge is the other voice that the entire system has constructed to help oversee the discipline. But I have no clue as to what I’m missing because I don’t actually find out wha tthe judge saw and thought.
If the judge has a notation that they use while judging to help them rank a class, that per a scoring system means ‘hanging knees’, now I have something to learn from and follow up.
This is the weirdest thing of all to me about the culture of hunter showing. This absolute fixation on the trainer to the exclusion of all other opinion. That’s how it appears to me.
I suspect that hunter showing culture needs to be left alone, as it is maintained by the people who like the way it is done and they will just continue to reinforce it.
People who want scores and judges’ feedback will probably be happier in another discipline that already provides that.
Because if this thread is anything to go by, it doesn’t sound as if hunters are going in that direction.
I hope literally everyone either reading or commenting on this thread is taking some time this week to watch the capital challenge live feed, preferably an entire class with a pen and piece of paper to try their hand at judging, with whatever method they prefer, and see where their eye is in comparison to the scores.
Actually, it’s more like “trainers are dependent on an ever-dwindling string of show clients to cover board losses because it’s basically $800+/mth just to keep a horse alive these days and, meanwhile, developers are slobbering over ALL THAT LAND which is basically the trainer’s retirement plan 'cause there’s sure as hell no 401K and a whole swath are nearing the age where they will not be able to do this back-breaking work anymore BUT young pros simply cannot afford a $1M/acre and so barns are moving further & further into the country and away from their customer base and good lord my brothers and sisters in horse do you not see the threat this is to the entire concept of middle-class horseback riding?!”
But sure. Chalk all that up to “life isn’t fair” and let the chips fall where they may.
This is a completely different argument than the one you made that I replied to:
Pick an argument and stick with it, or at least don’t take my response to argument A and pretend it was a response to argument B.
Sure. If you get a blue ribbon, your trainer is effective. If you never get a blue ribbon, you might want to look elsewhere. If you are scoring 60’s and you don’t know why, then yes, you are underrepresented. It’s actually not rocket science, and there aren’t many judges I’d train with.
I mean, the jumper judge can certainly tell you why you had that rail down, but no one is arguing that that is his job.
You literally cherry-picked my post & completely neglected to opine on the fundamental concerns that lead us to wonder if there is possibly, maybe, just a suggestion! other or additional ways we could be doing things.
…and…
Add to the time each round takes, like dressage, where the judge and the scribe can confirm what was written matches their thoughts, etc.
Which would limit the number of rounds a judge can do in a day.
Which would limit the number of classes able to be held in that ring for the day.
Which would mean changing what classes are run at each show or lengthening the show days or requiring more rings.
Which would mean shows would cost more.
But sure…just change what the job description is.
Well, you can also look at it from the other side, where it looks like people are wanting to change a system to compensate for their lack of education about the sport.
I don’t think this solves the issues you think it does.
First, what if the judge is wrong? This whole thread was started over an article that acknowledge that hey, maybe we need to train judges better, which implies that yes, judges can be wrong.
Second, no, a judge’s feedback isn’t the best ruler for a rider to evaluate their trainer’s effectiveness. A judge’s feedback could, at best, tell you things to improve on based on a 2 minute round on one day. It doesn’t reflect where that rider was a year ago, or two years ago, just as one round’s show results may not accurately reflect progress and training when compared to looking at improvement over a season, or multiple seasons.
Third, do you really think that for many riders “hangs knees” is going to be a helpful comments without a trainer? Where did it hang its knee, where did it need more pace, were there parts of the course where the rhythm was good?
Fourth, a trainer can help decide whether to change anything for the show ring/better places or whether there is a specific reason for the horse to go how it is. Maybe the judge wants to see more pace, but the rider is nervous and they’ve decided to have a season of doing the adds in the lines knowing they are giving up the win.
Fifth, the judge is not the higher authority on what is correct for you and your horse. The judge is (or should be) the higher authority on what is the most technically correct hunter trip. If we’re talking about making the sport accessible, lets not act like everyone is rolling into a show to be the champion of the day. Maybe your horse doesn’t have a change. Maybe you’re trotting into the lines on a greenie. Maybe you’re an eventer going for stadium jumping miles and this is the best venue locally so why not.
A trainer not training, not being qualified, or just bad trainers in general is a huge problem in the sport. But at the end of the day it is not going to be solved by a few comments scribbled on a judge’s card. If a rider is consistently placing poorly with no explanation from a trainer that should be a red flag.
Lastly, I don’t like the hunter showing culture. There is a lot I would change. I’ve made conscious switches to do more shows that offer jumpers and done more eventing this summer because I do not like the hunters. But I don’t think feedback from judges is the issue here.
