I agree that the FEI need a boot up the bum

sister duke

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theres a difference with iberian stallions and rollkured horses. the signs are through the whole body not just the head carriage. this was even alluded to in the commentary... in a rare moment where judy ALMOST mentionned hyperflexion but obviously wasnt allowed.... i imagine!

and yes we know everyone does it, and its very hard to stop people training a certain way in the privacy of their own yards but the point here is that its a flagrant break of FEI rules on GB turf at the biggest competition of the year, and most of us dont like that one bit. thank GOD for carl, charlotte and laura flying the flag for proper classical empathic training.....

from personal experience ive seen the FEI massively fail the horses before by allowing one to compete with pneumonia, against veterinary advice, who, of course never recovered and died so am not surprised by their massive fail with this issue.

who are the FEI anyway? are they made up of horse people? or just businessmen? anyone know?!!!
 

Mondy

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Flighty horse in very tense atmosphere gets overbent and short inthe neck , there's a surprise.


It ought to be surprising, but your post seems to suggest you think the right way to deal with a 'flighty', tense horse is to pull at the reins?

When you reach the Olympics in dressage, I should like to think that enough harmony and trust had been established between horse and rider to avoid hyperflexion and blue tongues. Besides, the video showing the training in hyperflexion does suggest that the spooking/'unfortunate moment' explanation is another little lie.
 

Alyth

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It seems to me that there are actually 3 issues being discussed world wide!! Firstly that well known riders are receiving higher marks than they deserve. Secondly that rollkur/hyperflexion is being used for extended periods of time in a hidden warm up area and thirdly that the FEI don't seem to be doing anything about the problem....IMO the comment about flightly horses shortening their neck etc is being sarcastic as the problem is actually the horse being forced into this type of outline rather than going there of his own accord!!
 

Sussexbythesea

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+1. I've been avoiding the threads. Reading them after being there on Thursday made me sad - it was one of the best experiences of my life, and it was a shame to see the threads focusing on the actions of a few, rather than celebrating the great stuff.

FWIW - I didn't see tense, unhappy horses in the ring. I saw supremely fit athletes, bursting at the seams to get on with the job. Every horse was BTV at some point, including the two Iberians. The atmosphere is electric there, and I'm not surprised that horses were a bit tense. Should also be borne in mind that to perform at this level, there needs to be a degree of muscular tension - it's not physically possible to carry out these movements without it. Look at human athletes expressions and musculature as they go for the finish line - they're not very relaxed either!

Totally agree.

I'm against Rollkur and always have been not just now but for several years since I first became aware of it. However Adeline's horse also had a totally different conformation than say Uthopia or Valegro who are pretty compact. With not a particularly well set neck that is narrow at the point the head joins the neck and would more easily be come overbent particularly on a strong hot horse.

Whatever is said the overall impression of Adeline's test in the Stadium was good and pretty much the crowd knew it as we all waited with or own tension showing for the score to come up. I know watching it on TV and replaying it bit by bit you can see the tension more clearly and find fault in it but you can with most of the tests. The close ups on TV were defintely more revealing but you don't see these on the day and even the judges don't get that close.

I don't think though there was a 4% difference between Adeline's test and Laura's - watching Laura's back it was even better than I thought from seeing it in the stadium but I do have my own pictures that show Alf and Laura looking quite crooked at times and slightly behind the vertical.

Judges can and should only judge what they see before them, leave their predjudices behind and have to discount anything that has happened before, including bad press.
 

Booboos

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Just for another view point, I was at a regional DR competition yesterday (here in France) and everyone thought the results were rigged to win Britain the gold. They thought Adelinde was robbed, that her test was far better than Valegro's, whose test had numerous mistakes. A couple of French who had been in the audience on Thursday described the atmosphere as depressed at the end of C's test because all the Brits knew she had lost the gold due to the mistakes, but then it was all jubillantly forgotten as soon as the scores came through. No one seems to care about rollkur here, it's just a training method.

So global FEI conspiracies tend to look a bit different from where in the world you happen to be standing in! ;)

Even on this forum there have been views both that there was an FEI conspiracy to stop GB from getting three medals AND an FEI conspiracy to promote rollkur horses.

Now this is just a suggestion and I may by all means be wrong, but is it possible that there is no FEI conspiracy and the judges mark what is in front of them on the day? Disagreeing with a mark for a movement or the subjective mark for artistic merit for a test is one thing, but claiming that the entire governing body has a hidden agenda that subverts stewards like Jenny Lorriston Clarke and judges like Stephen Clarke does a disservice to the entire sport.
 
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