MiaBella
Well-Known Member
Interesting comment from both Tina Gifford who felt the short back rail confused horses and from William FP who said that there was a sea of flags and the horses didn't know which ones to lock on to.
In the old days trainers like Lady Hugh Russell had you jump coloured spots on the fences, so that you learnt accuracy. Now of course to save time and materials fences can be black flagged so horses just jump between flags (rather than that old fashioned idea where you could jump the corner or the bounce or the one stride of the V). Do we think that riders have become slack in this part of the training, that horses know to jump between flags so riders aren't so hot on their accuracy?
Apart from Nicola's horse that injured itself (and was not straight over the first corner so was not going to make the second) the couple that did go the straight way made it look easy. The comments from the riders was that they thought the time would be easy to make so this was a long route they could afford to take, but that extra distance, the extra turning did take it out of the horses and the time wasn't so easy.
In the old days trainers like Lady Hugh Russell had you jump coloured spots on the fences, so that you learnt accuracy. Now of course to save time and materials fences can be black flagged so horses just jump between flags (rather than that old fashioned idea where you could jump the corner or the bounce or the one stride of the V). Do we think that riders have become slack in this part of the training, that horses know to jump between flags so riders aren't so hot on their accuracy?
Apart from Nicola's horse that injured itself (and was not straight over the first corner so was not going to make the second) the couple that did go the straight way made it look easy. The comments from the riders was that they thought the time would be easy to make so this was a long route they could afford to take, but that extra distance, the extra turning did take it out of the horses and the time wasn't so easy.