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lisakb

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ooh, very very interesting.
Mark Phillipps says that Lexington and Badminton are going to be 5*, i saw that one coming a long time ago.
totally agree with a lot of what Leslie says. the sport's not the problem, it's cocky riders who think they are safe going faster than they or their horses are capable of.
very interesting articles, thankyou.
 
very interesting. My trainer and I were talking about this yesterday. In our view the jumps have just got too big. We were debating the options of making the dressage phase harder, lowering the x-country jumps and raising the SJs.
 
I also agree with this statement "This has left a large proportion of our core USEA membership—the 90-plus percent of Eventers who will never compete above preliminary—asking whether there is a place left for them in the sport. "

I went out x-country schooling here in Dallas this weekend. I am new to eventing, as is my mare. There was very slim picking of fences we could comfortably do. We ended up way out of our (my!) comfort zone jumping the "smaller" fences. They were 3ft 6 - 3ft 9..... I am now questioning if I am going to be able to comfortably start competing. The dressage tests are easy in comparison.
 
[ QUOTE ]
ooh, very very interesting.
Mark Phillipps says that Lexington and Badminton are going to be 5*, i saw that one coming a long time ago.
totally agree with a lot of what Leslie says. the sport's not the problem, it's cocky riders who think they are safe going faster than they or their horses are capable of.
very interesting articles, thankyou.

[/ QUOTE ]

do you think that also they are trying to make more money by the horse going through the grades quicker than they should/are ready for?????????????
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possibly. i think it's pure ambition too... it looks better to be competing at a higher grade, obviously, but it takes time and experience to move a horse up the grades.
i don't agree that the xc fences are too big, by pure sj standards they're small really, sjers think nothing of jumping a 4'6" track of showjumps. there have been plenty of top event horse and rider combinations that could have coped with a bigger xc track, i believe.
the absolute basic inescapable truth is that if you are entrusting your life to the judgement and brainpower of an animal that hasn't even worked out not to poo in its hay, sometimes things will go wrong... we all hope and pray that it will never be us, that our training and experience and judgement and luck will all come together to keep us and our horses safe, but sometimes they don't. the fact that some of these terrible falls over the years have happened to some of our top, top riders proves that fact, unfortunately.
 
i agree but we just Cannot escape the fatalities and serious injuries that we have heard of in the last few years, something is going on that needs to be addressed without losing anymore riders/horses, and without turning the xc into a health and safety minefield.. maybe tougher qualifications for bigger events????????
 
hmm, a lot of these falls have happened at the lower events though. i mean, look at Darren Chiacchia's fall, at Prelim level, you wouldn't get a more experienced jockey than him. you can't legislate against that, it was just an awful awful accident.
Moody_Mare, it sounds as if your schooling courses are all wrong tbh. that's not the fault of the sport, it's the individual owners of the courses, and the riders that don't say anything about the fences being inappropriate for what they want to do.
i took 2 horses xc schooling here last week, they are coming out at Intro and PN level, and i didn't have to jump anything big or frightening... in fact, i don't think i jumped anything over 3'5", but they both learnt a lot about xc. there was a huge range of fences from a foot high to about 3'6"... in fact, i did think that there wouldn't be a lot there to challenge a really experienced horse, but there was tons for the baby ones.
 
But SJing and XCing are very different in how they must be ridden and the speed at which they are ridden - when you are jumping a 4'6'' SJ track you are in a very controlled, relatively slow canter, over good ground normally, when you are jumping the same height XC you are going far faster, over uneven ground, and dealing with banks, ditches and water that are very different from the majority of SJ tracks. Additionally, when you do a SJ course, you are jumping for perhaps 1-2 minutes, XC you are jumping far far longer, covering much more ground, and the horse and rider will inevitably be more tired - jumping a big SJ 1min 30 into the course is far easier than jumping a big XC fence many minutes and miles into a XC course. Not to mention, of course, that freak accidents aside, hitting a SJ results in a few penalty points as it hits the ground, hitting a XC fence can and does result in injuries for the horse and rider - I know which I would far rather hit given the choice!
 
yes, i can see your point... what i meant was that a 4* course, with a max height of 3'11", is nowhere near the top of a good horse's jump. the fences look huge and imposing, but are well within the capabilities of a decent scopey jumper.
the Hickstead Derby, for example, is very very big fences, much bigger than Badminton or Burghley etc, with undulations, and the jump-off is ridden pretty quickly.
 
I dont think they shoudl get bigger, the horses at badminton etc. come back looking tired enough and rapping enough fences, don't think it would do the sport any good to raise the fences
 
When I rode in my teens, I did a lot of SJing and XC. As teenagers are apt, we always wanted to jump bigger fences, mainly so we could say that we had. Our instructor told us, till she was blue in the face, that technical jumping is a far more worthy achievement, and, after giving in and letting us 'throw ourselves over whatever high single fences we liked' we went back to jumping more complex, but not as high fences.

What I am getting at, is that the height of the fences are just one portion of it, the technical aspect, the stamina, etc are all equally important, and asking tired horses to jump big fences is an unnecessary risk - by all means pop some height in at the SJing phase to ensure that only horses with a decent scope can advance to higher levels (although asking horses to jump big after going XC is in itself a task, so perhaps not), maybe include a couple of jumps early on in the course, but the wide fences usually ensure the horse has scope enough don't they?

Whilst Hickstead is big, and the jump off ridden quickly, it is more akin to a sprint, and the horses don't get the sort of fatigue they do over XC - XC is more comparable to a marathon. The other thing to bear in mind, is that pure SJ horses have a very different 'make up' to event horses, most SJers would not have the strength or muscle development to do the dressage and XC phases, so to compare a pure SJer to an event horse is not really fair.
 
I understand that, but was just commenting that a good event horse has a different body and muscle make up to a SJing horse, so perhaps they shouldn't be expected to have the same scope?
 
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