I’ve gotten (from a German judge in Germany), “Iberian horses don’t belong in this sport.” That sport being dressage. LOL
Oddly enough, I placed middle of the pack on my PRE (equivalent to US second level) and showed in front of this judge again about 2 months later and he placed us much higher than I would’ve scored us, so who knows
Then again, he called a Fell Pony a Friesian, so maybe he’s just lost the plot
I feel like dressage can be a toss up at times. It shouldn’t be, and usually isn’t, but once in awhile you’re just like, really?!
Competing in Germany is cheap as chips and generally well organized. I find competitions to be accessible and affordable.
The US just has a different structure and funding, so it’s different. I don’t care for it much, and it’s definitely more of a “rich persons sport” in the US.
About 30 years ago, I scribed for an “I” judge. He had told a group of us Lipizzans were circus horses and did not belong in dressage competitions. While scribing, I did not tell him the white horse that won all of his classes was a 16 hand Lipizzan. If I only had the guts to say something…
I guess I must have been very fortunate when I have been a scribe at our local, small, middle of nowhere shows. I am NOT doubting the stories about judging prejudices but almost to a fault, the judges I have scribed for have been kind, and rooting for everyone - from the kid on a quarter horse to the person on the OTTB to put in a nice test. Especially at the lower levels, the steady, rhythmic, no muss no fuss horses scored pretty well.
Where things got harder was 2nd + where there were (clearly, even from my perspective) folks doing the movements but really struggling w/ the necessary shift in balance, frame and engagement. Honestly, the breed didn’t matter, although horses built to be dressage horses tended to score a bit better because either coaching or simply finding the collection easier.
I guess sometimes playing in the small ponds (puddles) has its benefits.
I have had the same experiences at our schooling show series and our recognized shows. While we are not in Wellington or southern CA, we are not in a dressage wasteland. The worst I can remember was when I was scribing for a judge who, similarly to the judge in @BatCoach’s post above, berated a seven year-old runner for making the mistake of approaching during a test. My hear sank for that poor kid. When a judge can’t be kind to a child who makes a mistake, she gets reported to show management and never gets hired again. Bye, Felicia, you mean old woman.
I’m one of those who would look the judge deadset in the eye and say, “my dressage horse IS an OTTB,” then fail to respond with more than one or two, single syllabol words afterward. In this case my horse is an OTTB, but had they used QH, Paint, Tennessee Walker, donkey, I’d still respond the same.
Speaking of the old boy, my horse and I showed exactly once at recognized, so take my response/feelings as a sample of n=1. From my dataset, I found the following:
The paperwork alone nearly requires a certified project manager to properly join the proper organizations, sign up for the proper class, and be assigned to the proper stabling area;
As mentioned in 2017 when this thread started, everyone’s there to do a job which precludes certain common courtesies, for example failing to respond to greetings such as Good Morning or failing to make eye contact. My weekend was, hmm, very serious.
There’s a lack of cammeraderie except with those from your own barn. I come from the eventing world, my first memories of a competitors party was the evening before xc was drinking beer from the back of a pick up with the big names of the early 80s. Nobody gave a who you were as long as you could carry on a conversation.
Conclusion, recognized dressage shows aren’t for me and that’s okay. These days we spend our time on the trails and doing the occasional horse camping weekend. It wasn’t a thing I expected having competed for so long as a kid and later as an adult, but there you go on life’s long journey.
I wish I was more knowledgeable at the time. It was about 9 years ago, I had not yet stated showing dressage (I was volunteering at a ride-a-test clinic) and I was not even aware that making a judge’s report was an option. It’s one of the reasons forums like CoTH are so helpful, this is the only place I have heard about judges reports and how to properly handle complaints.
Exactly. If you compete for fun, or to try to improve your scores, or get feedback from a judge or just have fun with friends in the barn, that’s great. But if you go expecting to win, and you’re not in the ribbons, don’t bitch that your lack of winning is because of bad judging, expensive horses that their owners can’t ride for sh*t, etc. Don’t spend the money on competition if it’s those other reasons you are showing. I don’t dispute that often a competent rider on a less than stellar mover gets beat by a big fancy mover that makes a lot of mistakes in the test. It does happen and it sucks. But there are plenty of times that people go to shows to compete and they are riding at a level beyond their or their horse’s skill set. Or they have an inflated opinion of their ability that the judges clearly don’t share. I just think blaming the “death of competitive dressage” on the fancy and/or expensive horses is misguided. If you can afford to show, then show. Have fun, but don’t expect to win every time.
Edited to add: I do not have, nor have I ever had (with one exception 30 years ago) a fancy expensive horse to compete.
I think it started in my area because of lack of a suitable venue for a recognized show. There were smaller venues for schooling shows and the GMO made money on schooling shows. When the treasury coffers were full there was a search for place to put on a recognized show. At first one ( maybe several?) were held at the B’ham racetrack. I don’t know if horse racing had ceased at that point but there were temporary stalls, a track on which to set up arenas and places for warm-up. Then horse racing ceased to exist in Alabama and the facilities got sold off. So the search was on for a venue. There were some less than optimal places but they were a long drive from Birmingham and all the members and volunteers lived hours from that venue so that didn’t work.
At the same time there were quite a few recognized shows in Georgia that members went to and showed there so the recognized show idea got shelved. Finally a facility was developed north of Birmingham which has numerous shows. I don’t know if any are recognized shows but the GMO no longer has the membership to put on a recognized show of their own. So the members split - those people with more expensive horses showed in Florida and Georgia at the fancy venues. The people riding at training level and below, western, gaited, etc. frequent the schooling shows. The local GMO runs at least one schooling show a year. Cheaper, more accessible but not fancy footing or amenities. The two groups don’t associate that much anymore. If you are in one clique you are not interested in the other group - even to audit clinics. But I think both groups are happy so that is that.
I have scribed a lot for schooling shows and I don’t think I have ever heard a judge disparage a horse’s breed. I have seen a judge rip a competitor a new one when the rider was unnecessarily rough with her horse. But most of the horses in the schooling shows are not WB’s so no way to tell if they get higher scores.
Like this rider. Apparently she got at 51% then was eliminated for taking one of her hands off the reins. She was getting in the 60% the year before on this horse.
No one is expecting to “win every time.” But I do think people expect a fair judging system.
I took a semester-long graduate ethics class once. The professor had 2 PhD’s. He said people may not like the results of how they are evaluated but they are willing to accept the judgement if they consider the system by which they were evaluated to be fair.
Based on the comments here, it seems there is not a lot of faith in the current dressage judging system.
I also took some other courses on risk management and the saying was, “perception is reality”…the advice was to communicate because if you have no other information by which to base your point of view, then perception becomes reality.
I think you have to consider that the unhappy are more willing to complain than those who feel the system is fair to them.
There are reports that can be filed, as I have mentioned here. They are taken seriously by those in charge of judges.
OK…then, “What we have here is a failure to communicate”…as a famous character once said. Perhaps the dressage decisionmakers need to communicate more about these reporting systems.
I do think for your basic AA, the cost/benefit equation has to tilt towards a “fun was had by all” for the cost of competitions to be worth it.
Agreed. I don’t doubt that biased judges exist, and that they ruin the fun for some. But I think it’s a tiny minority - and one we need to report up the whazoo until it’s gone.
Having shown both fancy and non-fancy warmbloods, and PREs, I’ve been judged fairly nearly every time. There is one specific judge I won’t show a PRE in front of - but she’s my sole offender over ~15 years in the ring many times per year.
And honestly, that doesn’t mean I was happy about all those scores in real time. There were definitely times I thought I rode better/knew more than I did, or had more solid basics than I did. But in hindsight I recognize where my holes were, and why I scored how I did at different times on different horses.
I think above all else, the problem is expense. Not only the grain and the bedding and the gas and the board - but also the training to learn to ride well and to train your horse to score well.
FWIW - our Regionals seemed about as big as usual this year.
For this to work, though, riders have to be willing to accept being judged fairly according to the published standards in the test. That may be a bitter pill to swallow for some. Not referring to anyone in particular but it is easier to blame the judge and the “leg flingers” than it is to admit that you missed the letter for the simple change or you had a clunky downward transition or the mediums are decidedly lackluster.
Sure if someone makes a comment about how unfortunately you’re mounted - complain about the comment in and of itself. But I have a hard time coming after judges for including gaits in their scores when it’s part of the standards for the test and we are accepting we will be evaluated subjectively by entering the show in the first place.
You name different problems. One is the person who is “barn blind” to their own mistakes in the test and wants to move blame away from themselves for that poor score.
The other problem-- about gaits having a coefficient is more complicated. I do think it has laid emphasis on the buying of the pretty-moving horse rather than the training of the lesser horse. But I think it originally was meant to stress that correct training would improve all of the gaits. I could be wrong about that.
It is fine to generally argue that if you don’t like the rules, don’t enter (or, by the same token, don’t apply to join the racist country club while being black or Jewish). But accepting that kind of bias as a kind of implied consent by folks who stay in the sport works to preserve that bias. And, I promise you, it shrinks the sport.
As an aside it’s kind of a bummer for horses and riders “of mediocrity.” I could be wrong about this, but that’s because, as I understood it, dressage training produced the best gaits possible for a horse because it encourages the correct use of his body. He will be strong and supple at the end, plus a light, responsive horse to ride. His rider, along the way, learns a lot of feel and timing, and how to ride a horse to the most correct use of his body possible.
I’m sure this is a rather rose colored view of competitive dressage. But if it happens at all, the sport ought to try and make itself into something more than a form of performance testing and the creation of a market for Northern European horse breeders.
You’re responding to a point I didn’t make. I was replying to a post suggesting reporting judges for bias if you don’t get scores you like on your “off breed.”
If you overhear a judge make an obviously biased comment about your horse, report that.
But you shouldn’t report a judge (and therefore, penalize them) because you perceive a bias when the bias is inherent in the way the tests are designed to be evaluated, and also you may or may not be “barn blind.” You knew the test going in. Reporting judges for judging the test as written is not the solution to the idea of removing the gaits score. If there’s no judges, well, that would certainly kill recognized dressage.
The online discussions of how quality of gaits impacts final scores tends to devolve into a lot of generalities that lead me to question to what extent people are really looking into the directives.
Look, for example, at Training Level Test 3. There are 13 boxes for scoring and ALL 13 of them mention quality of gaits. EVERY BOX! What choice does the judge have at this level, other than to factor in the quality of the gaits?
But then, move up the levels to take a look at Fourth Level Test 3. Now we have 22 boxes in which to earn scores. And only THREE out of the 22 mention quality of gaits. Instead of “quality” the words regularity, engagement and straightness are repeated in the directives much more often. Any horse of any breed can demonstrate regularly and engagement & straightness to the extent that its conformation allows.
In both tests the score for Gaits is included in the Collective Marks but as in all tests, it’s a coefficient of 1, and Impulsion & Submission are the coefficients of 2. Therefore the quality of natural gaits is absolutely considered but it’s possible and available to any horse to outscore the fanciest mover in the Impulsion & Submission categories. Particularly in Submission.
What I take from that analysis (and from my experiences scribing) is to acknowledge that the bias toward fancy movers is indeed inherent in the lower level competition-- but to stick with it because the directives and expectations themselves serve to level the playing field as we work our way up.
The statement about the rude comments is something I’ve experienced. There are certain judges I avoid - so certain shows - because I know my money won’t be well spent. You have to learn from showing, not be eviscerated because they don’t like your horse. Everyone should be judged fairly.
In my area, it seems that the schooling shows are becoming non-existent and all there is now is rated shows. Maybe there’s less rated too but I’m not sure.
This thread is frustrating because despite the best attempts by several of us to explain why we’ve stopped showing and no longer feel it is worthwhile or that we and our horses are welcome, multiple folks are telling us how we should feel about our own experiences or that it’s essentially our own fault (barn blind? really? We all know people who are, but to write off some of the complaints above as nothing but barn blindness is just dismissive and unproductive) or that we just need to ride differently or approach showing different or, or, or.
I don’t know how to fix the sport, and I’m not sure there is an impetus to do so that will result in meaningful change. I fear that it will continue to shrink in many areas until such time the only people competing are the ones who can afford and want to ride the dressage-bred horses. The grassroots of the sport will continue to whittle away until such time it is nonexistent. It is a shame.
who you were as long as you could carry on a conversation.