FEI to introduce yellow card system for dressage warmups

H

Halfstep

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I'm really ambivalent about this, but it will be extremely interesting to see how (if) it works. The interpretation of what constitutes abuse is simply too "fuzzy". this came about as a result of the whole Scandic rollkur thing. But like Richard Davidson said in H&H last week: who is going to judge where deep ends and rollkur begins? Or even if rollkur is going to be judged abusive (I, for what its worth, don't think it is when done for brief periods of time).

Anyway: interesting times. Bets on the first rider to get a yellow card? Personally, having watched the warmups and training at the Europeans, I don't think it will be who some might think.......
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hmm.
i was watching a Carl Hester vid earlier, and he's warming up a horse deep and round, but it is so obviously SOFT, his reins aren't tight, his contact isn't fixed, etc etc. he isn't "powerising" the horse around into locked hands, bracing against the contact, etc etc.
i think it is possible to see/tell the difference, is what i'm trying to say, i guess.
 
It will be VERY hard to judge. One's persons round & deep is another persons Rollkur. Not even top riders and trainers can agree on this - how can stewards be expected to?

Halfstep - do share what you saw at the Europeans!
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[ QUOTE ]
Bring back the 2 mark penalty for being behind the vertical, it would put a halt to the prevalent use of this technique

Simples!?

[/ QUOTE ]

I do think they should do that, but it wouldn't necessarily stop Rollkur in warm up would it? Many riders use Rollkur for "suppling" during schooling and prior to a test - I do agree that this needs to be looked at but undecided how this yellow card system could be policed objectively.
 
I think this has the potential to be very very subjective and therefore be a total mess. It doesn't concentrate specifically on rollkur, it mentions the welfare of the horse in general so there will be quite a few judgements that stewards will have to make.

I suspect the FEI will get countless appeals to the yellow cards and I am not sure how it will deal with the appeals either:
- if you ban something outright, e.g. dutch gag bits, this is easy to police; if the competitor uses one they have broken the rules, using one is evidence of their breaking their rules
- if you ban something whose misuse leaves physical evidence, again that physical evidence is proof of the misuse, e.g. spurs are fine, but bloodying the horse with the spurs is not, the blood being the proof of the misuse.
- how are they going to show misuse for something that is a matter of degree and duration? How will they resolve appeals? Before long riders will have to have their grooms filming all their warm-up as evidence of what happened (esp as we know we can't rely on Epona TV to provide all their footage!
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Its just like rapping SJ'ers it must become forbidden (but will probably still be used at home)

I think its fairly obvious to spot when reins are tight as shown in some of the nastier pictures

I love this quote about Rollkur
<font color="blue"> "It is an authoritarian and brutal approach to domination that significantly deprives the horse of its capacities and places "man's noblest conquest" in the position of a slave restrained in shackles" </font>

Edited to add: FEI rule book (Art 401-406) recommends "... the head slightly in front of the vertical".

So why are the judges rewarding the opposite of the rules? Dressage has really gotten itself into a rut!
 
[ QUOTE ]
Bring back the 2 mark penalty for being behind the vertical, it would put a halt to the prevalent use of this technique

Simples!?

[/ QUOTE ]

I wonder if it would be simple.

It would be interesting to see what the FEI thought of the changes in scoring in ice skating. Ice skating was plagued by the same cries of subjective marking heard in dressage. The audience was often booing the decisions of judges, who were accused of marking according to national allegiances. The scoring system was not transparent as each judge gave one rounded mark with no account of how they had arrived at it (OK, one mark for technical, one mark for artistic interpretation).

Ice skating radically changed things, allocating specific marks to specific movements and with specific penalties for getting specific things wrong, result: an even bigger mess than before. They now have a special 'techinical' judge who sits there rewinding and playing back a recording of the test to figure out what actually happened and how many marks are due. Even TV commentators don't have a clue how the marks are arrived at, you often hear them say things like "well that looked like a quarduple lutz, but the mark looks like something went wrong there, so maybe it wasn't".
 
Out of interest, how would people mark these two halts:

straight up the centre line, halt square, as the rider salutes horse curles up into rollkur apparently all by itself (this is kind of my interpretation of PK's halt).

straight up the centre line, halt square, as the rider salutes horse sticks its head up to acknowledge the admiring crowd (this is Rusky's favourite trick for losing marks!).
 
[ QUOTE ]
Bring back the 2 mark penalty for being behind the vertical, it would put a halt to the prevalent use of this technique

Simples!?

[/ QUOTE ]

Judges still should and do mark down horses who are behind the vertical. BUT, a good judge sees the whole horse. Also, as I've said before, the position of the head is relative to the neck, not to the ground. So "behind the vertical" isn't always what it seems, unless it is very obvious - in which case the neck will be short and the hind end trailing.

Remember that (as yet) judges do not judge the warmup. And many top trainer, Carl Hester and Kyra Kurklund included, believe that riding a horse deep in training (technically behind the vertical) does help to gymnasticise the horse's body - something, for the record, I agree with.
 
Yellow cards are nothing new, they have always (or long) been available to be used in dressage warm ups. The first one you get serves as merely a warning and remains on file with the FEI. If you get another within a year, you are suspended. No change; this was already in effect. The issue is that the people with the authority to yellow card either don't believe they see a reason to do so or are afraid to so so for fear of repercussion.
So this is basically a non-statement, unless officials are actually going to be given some meaningful guidelines to follow (i.e. 2 minutes OK, 10 minutes not OK), and are going to be backed up by the judicial system, all of which remains to be seen but is perhaps hinted at.
 
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