Dressage judging

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Flowerofthefen

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It will be interesting ( or possibly not!) how top end dressage will now be judged. Will judges still reward the blue tounge, btv and tension or will they now realise that by giving top marks to these things are encouraging all this horse abuse. Or will they start to judge on relaxation etc. Come on judges, do what you know needs to be done for the sake of future horse sport.
 
I think the judging has changed a bit since all of the social media posts criticising some of the top riders scoring. Because the top riders horses are such extravagant movers they will still win but the difference in the scores are less, if you look at Becky Moodys recent marks they aren’t far behind CDJ so it is getting better. I doubt the CDJ video will affect what the judges reward
 
In my experience, both in the horse world and elsewhere, judges judge what they personally like to see, and as a result it influences what then happens going forward.

In Dressage, it's a particular way of going which is favoured, which is why certain warmblood breeds dominate the sport. Humans are also swayed heavily by bias and 'friends pass' is a huge issue in any judged class which is based wholly on the judges interpretation. It then be becomes a vicious circle. Until the human element of judging is removed, (I'm not sure how this could be done in dressage) then I'm afraid nothing will change.
 
We have to completely reassess the breeding, training and judging. If, IF, we could change judging it would help the other two no end, but I don't see that kind of paradigm shift any time soon. It involves people with money and power actually having to think about "should we be riding, should we be competing, and if yes to either or both, then how do we do it in the most ethical way possible" and not only do they not have any understanding of the answers, but they don't even want to go there. Horses are tools.
 
I think people will be very clearly patting their horses and trying to look like they care (I know some do, well I say that but I thought CDJ did but who knows anymore)

We have to question the wastage too, these dressage horses being bred now are so extreme and clearly so hard to control, you don't have a hope of those not making the grade being able to be sold to amateurs. Whereas you do see amateurs on some retired racehorses (NOT saying the wastage rate in racing is good, it's shocking too)

Plus in both those that don't stay sound (dressage due to the extreme almost unnatural way they now move, racing due to the racing 2 year olds/hard training regime)

I'd be very interested to see the percentage of wastage in dressage vs racing
 
Nah. Not unless a chunky majority of people get turned off from participating across the levels. Which I don't think will happen. It might slowly decline I suppose and that might eventually cause a significant shift, but in the near term I shouldn't think there will be much other than a bit of tinkering around the edges as a bit of a PR exercise.
 
If someone like Elon Musk got a hankering for dressage competition, and had the horses' best interests at heart, and organised competitions with Really Good Judges who were allowed to give true scores to all the competitors as they saw fit; and if the prizes were good enough to encourage many many entries, slowly, slowly, the no-good, corrupt, increasingly-unfashionable competitions of today would peter out due to lack of interest.

Unfortunately, this is very unlikely to happen.
 
I had a thought.
Reintroduce descente des mains / descente des jambes (pardon my French) to higher level tests, say Advanced onwards.
Any movement that is marked a 6 or above receives a coefficient of 1.5 if it is performed with a loop in the rein.
I say you have to score a 6+ in the first place because otherwise you could find people going “ well this movement is crap” and throwing the reins at the horse to improve their 4 to a 6.

Descente des jambes may in reality be too hard to judge. It would be practically impossible for a judge to see a calf aid or lack of it.
 
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