Badminton 2025

stangs said:
And I can't imagine the top level of the sport being told the horse has atrophy and not doing anything to change it when muscle atrophy would mean poorer performance.
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I can imagine it pretty easily tbh. If it ain't broke (yet), don't fix it, eh? The "they are valued athletes and therefore must get the best of everything" doesn't really hold up to me. These horses are, what, 1/100,000 athletes, probably even a larger ratio. They can obviously cope and do well with that musculature but that doesn't mean it is necessarily optimal for them either? They could perform better, or be sound for longer, if they didn't have that strange dip. How do we know?

If it is primarily a saddle fit issue, as people seem to be suggesting, a physio might not have a lot of influence over that and has to just do their best with the situation in front of them.

Personally, I think it is odd, and it worth having a conversation about it. People posting their own horses and bragging about how they have a better topline than a 5* eventer is all a bit cringe tho.
 
I've seen a lot of those posts - some click bait (equitopia) & others more nuanced.

Watching slow mo of horses landing after big fences you can clearly see how the neck acts as a stabilising force. Depending on the landing it often jerks up and I have wondered for a while if that leads to a different muscular development to non jumping horses (or at least not jumping at this level). If using the neck as a lever for balance means they NEED a certain development then maybe we shouldn't interfere.

The dips behind the withers can very much come from fitness. My younger cob is super fit and has a much more prominent wither than when he came out of winter. Weight not changed but he would be fit enough to event even if we're at trip hazard height(!) His WOW saddle set up is currently not very cob like as a result.

I do think it's a lot more nuanced than people on t'internet make out. I was hugely disappointed by Equitopia jumping on the bandwagon - they're an enterprise who could do some decent research.
 
ester said:
It would be interesting to compare to older eventer trot up pics, albeit poss different sort of fitness when doing long format
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Long format stopped 20 years ago now (that’s a terrifying thought). 2006 I think was first short format Badminton? Nico Morgan has a really good online gallery of photos, wonder if it goes back that far?
 
Just a slight comment from someone who has recently qualified as a bit fitter, that which bit/how it sits in the mouth, etc. can influence muscle development.

But as everyone says, these horses are competing at the highest level. If they are producing good dressage tests why would the rider change things.
 
There was one horse who I thought looked particularly poor, especially compared to the horses who went either side of them in the trot ups.
 
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