BE overhaul

wht is the point of the name changes?

i can imagine myse3lf in a few months "oh i did a 100 today and this and this and this happened"... doesnt sound great if im honest
 
oh and the new names sound just fabulous when selling a horse BE100 eventer for sale...just has such a good ring about it
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Umm, i can see exactly what you mean, but personally i find xc far less daunting than the sj, certainly at the bigger levels, and a lot of horses (e.g. my mare) are a bit casual over sjs and give them a tap so don't have the best results on paper, but are natural xc horses and make it feel easy (and safe, btw.) that's the trouble... results can lie... it's possible to have a really dodgy sj round where you somehow manage to leave everything up, and equally to have a really good rhythmical sj round but tap down a couple.
hope you can see what i'm trying to get at here!

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I understand what you are saying, but that's not really what I meant....... When the PN SJ was reduced it was because too many newer competitiors weren't getting round. They would have a couple of stops, or continually miss their horses and have lots of rails (or even have the luck to go clear, but still complain about how it was too hard). There were complaints about the sizes of the courses, even though they were the same height as the XC, and I think the cash cow of a bigger pool of (albeit less experienced or capable) riders governed the decision to lower the heights. Hence there were then some scary combinations going XC. So the heights of the XC were lowered for a new level, ans so on........
If a rider is not capable of SJing at a particular height, and by that I mean making the job straightforward for the horse, whatever the faults incurred, they should not be allowed to jump XC at the same height. If a rider SJ's on a wing and a prayer, then the horse's confidence is ultimately going to suffer, eventually XC as well.
I understand (only too well!) how easy it is to have rails SJ, and the statisitcs of results are not necessarily indicative of competence or the lack thereof. It's the perception of the rider that somehow they have a 'right' to do the sport, whether or not they are capable of it, that is being catered for. And ultimately that leads to spoiled horses, and weakens the sport as a whole.
IMO,of course..........
No offence intended to any particular people here, (really
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), it's a reflection on the bigger picture, as I think eventing is heading to the same sorry state that BSJA is currently in, with a select few at the top dominating the sport.
 
I am confused (had a few years off eventing so I have no idea what has happened).

PN show jumps are no smaller than the XC - a couple of them are bigger.

I did PN / Novice as a teenager (about 13 or 14 years ago) - I don't remember it being harder then. If anything it seems harder now (but maybe I am getting old).
 
I am a little confused too Sillymare.

PN showjumping is max 1.05m, XC is max 1m
Intro showjumping is max 95cms, XC max 90cms
Novice showjumping is max 1.15m and XC max 1.10m

ie. all levels have showjumps marginally bigger than the XC.

???
 
Sorry, I'm going back to when it was first introduced. A long time ago........the PN XC courses were virtually the novice tracks without the combinations, so to dumb down the SJ was dangerous. The heights went back to being more equal when they started to add on all the lower levels. That's the bit that seems to me to be shooting itself in the foot the way the BSJA did by doing the same.
I realise it's all in the past and done and dusted now, but what saddens me is the way the sport as a whole is going.
But hey, it's only my opinion!
 
SillyMare, RachelFred, i agree. I don't remember the PN sj being made smaller due to rider demand, but i'm probably a bit out of touch. i thought it had gotten bigger since it was first introduced. The xc courses certainly have, the first PNs were very simple and easy iirc.
i think the introduction of lower levels was a bad idea, but it's a slippery slope we're all careering down now, BSJA, BE, etc etc. it used to be local shows and hunter trials to jump small courses, and then, when you'd got a bit of experience and hoped you were up to it, you'd have a crack at Newcomers or Novice Eventing. And if you weren't good enough, you soon frightened yourself/your horse/your parents/your friends/your trainer enough to decide that it was a much better idea to stick to the small pond, and have fun at local shows!
Now, as GtF says, it's as if people think they have "a right" to go eventing, and if they're not good enough to do 90cms, then please bring in 80cms, and if that's too taxing, please bring in 70cms. Personally i think jumping xc fences that small on a half-decent horse is downright dangerous, a lot of them will get totally blase and silly because there's nothing to back them off.
But... it's a cash cow, and at least it stops eventing seeming quite so elitist, perhaps?
not coming to any conclusions here obviously, just musing!
 
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I really hope we don't get BE70, or BE60 or anything along these lines...

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Hey, get it down to BE50 (Numpty) and I'll join
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Although I can usually take offence and criticism of we lesser talented mortals - I do see that unaffiliated is there for a reason and I would expect Affiliated to be a good standard.

Start too low and you are going to have people over confident in their abilities thinking they can jump up levels in BE and there will be accidents.

Plus surely with the amount of cancellations and balloting, you don't want to add more levels (therefore more competitors) and more confusion to an already squished up season?
 
Good point Gingermare - you can only run so many horses XC a day - so if you're putting extra sections of 80cm in then there will surely have to be fewer sections of something else at the higher level? Leading to more ballotng and fewer runs??

Added to which I'm sure these lower levels will need to be held on weekend days as they will be almost entirely amateurs, so then all the Nov/Int/Adv sections will be pushed onto weekdays? It's already going that way a bit anyway. Will this make it worse?
 
its happening at unnafiliated as well , more and more venues are choosing to run tiny classes , then taking out the decent open classes , its difficult to find a ode with a challenging open course for our talented young horse (you might ask why we don,t affiliate him , well because my husband works long hours and we live in cornwall , the cost of diesel and the higher entry fees make a huge difference to our hobby ) saying that , we were considering registering the horse for next year and having a punt at the serious stuff , 10% hike in fees will have to be taken into consideration
 
I really don't like the idea of these new level names. I think they are simply confusing, and yes ok it may be hard to explain to a non horsey person about intro, PN, PNP etc, a BE100 just doesn't have the right ring to it IMO.

Sorry BE.
 
I haven't read about it, but get the jist.

WTF!!

I agree with what has been said - how ridiculous! The names are confusing (even to a young brain!!) and the tests changing - NO!! Did BE ask their members? They are the poeple they should be aiming to please and correct me if I am wrong, but I do not beleive they presented their ideas in a survey or similar to see if it is what epople wanted.

Probably doesn't make sense at all
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Echoing LPR here.
I heard no mention of this, and I'm sure there are many people like me that went on the BE website to see BE100 thinking "oh, there's the intro dr test, they've just not changed it as its next years calendar. But hang on, it's the ON / N...So no PN? What..?" Am I right? Please tell me I was not the only one!
Hadn't realised on the DR name changes
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Oh dear.
BE really are causing problems - I don't see the Diving Association or British Gymnastics changing their movements names so the public understand it better in 2012...which I cynically think this all relates to... Can you imagine? "The Roumanian gymnast's routine consists of a jump up with a knee tuck to a cartwheel where you do a 1/2 turn [round off] to a jump somersault with straight body and a half turn [ pike]."
Don't think it's going to happen.
 
I remember the days when the PN was 3ft 6" so was overjoyed when they reduced it to 3ft 3" and then brought in Intro as that gave me something to aim for.

Although I can see what you're saying 'GoneToFrance', there aren't many Unaff and decent competitions run at even the above height, so if you want to do a few in a year you're forced to go down the BE route or give up the idea.

People like me would never have gone BE at all without the lower level classes. And I know in this day and age the entries from people like me prop up the competitions for people like you.

But one or 2 of us slip through the net, when our confidence grows and so does that of our horses, and we go on beyond Novice, so please don't knock us.
 
And hopefully the new names for the dressage tests will mean new dressage tests?

I'm soooo bored with doing the same boring ones month in, month out.
 
I didn't mean to knock anyone in particular, Madhossy, sorry if you took it that way, and I was just a grass roots rider too, no way was I propped up by BE adding lower classes! I was generalising about the direction the sport seems to be going in. I watched the BSJA deteriorate with the same 'progress'.
The riding clubs used to serve a purpose, there were some decent classes and team competitions, both SJ and XC. I rode in teams or comps where the BHTA courses were used for qualifiers or finals. It was a step up, but not too huge. What seems to have happened with the BE new classes is the loss of interest in competitions at local level, so the standards dropped. And then the competitions fell away. Now everyone seems to want to jump BE, so there are too many riders for the classes, people get balloted, and that seems to me to be a bad move.
Of course it's an ideal training ground for young horses and riders needing confidence, but the XC riding I saw when jump judging at PN level 4 years ago before I moved here was scary, and suggests that a fair proportion of riders have no idea what they're doing. And the Intro riding was just awful in some cases.
I know it helps some riders and horses, but in all honesty, these riders would, IMO, have coped just as well going in at PN as it used to be, with the RC and local shows as a prep. And doing BSJA in the winter, or in the (used to be) gap in the summer to sort out the SJ.
At local level, you could see everything, and support, or constructive criticism was there for everyone. That doesn't happen BE with hundreds of entries, and unless you have a trainer with you there is nobody really to help or advise. So the poor riding continues, as I'm sure half the dreadful riders are not aware of how inexperienced they are, or how they are spoiling their horses. It's not pleasant to watch, and cannot be attractive to sponsors, so it's another way of losing support for eventing.
I still think it is increasing the gulf between the top riders and the grass roots riders, and I don't think that is good.
I think the errors are long made, and if they add more classes I can see the events being separated into the higher levels and lower levels. And that would be a real shame when watching the pros ride at the same level is so educational and inspirational.
But hey, I'm just being a grumpy old git, what's done is done, I just hope I'm wrong.........
 
I agree with you that there are less Unaff events at the lower levels. That's what pushed me to try BE in the first place.

So maybe Unaff is the victim of BE's success as they were running their events at a loss.

Actually, in my area it's the loss of Open Pony Club Events that drove me to do BE. I'm way over the PC age
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, but there were about 5 Clubs in my area that ran an Open Intermediate Horse Trial over mostly BE courses for non PC Riders.

Those classes were less well supported over the years or entries for the PC classes were so full that they couldn't fit in the non - PC class at the end of the day.

So to my mind BE saw a niche and went for it - with great success by the looks of the number of Events that now ballot.

If there were more decently run Unaff events I'd go back to them - but there aren't.
 
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SillyMare, RachelFred, i agree. I don't remember the PN sj being made smaller due to rider demand, but i'm probably a bit out of touch. i thought it had gotten bigger since it was first introduced. The xc courses certainly have, the first PNs were very simple and easy iirc.
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ditto ^^^^ started eventing a few years ago and went with very experienced eventers who all commented on how much harder PN/N was now and how they thought the PN had become N and so on (sorry am i supposed to be using the new terms for the levels, i cant get my head round them at all sorry if i confused anyone )!!
 
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