Judging of Showing Classes

[Waterflea]

I have had reasonable success with my youngster in the show ring so don't have a particular axe to grind in that direction, but I have become more and more disillusioned with the judging of showing classes because of:-

- unprofessional fraternisation between judges and competitors they know

- the constant encouragement of putting forward overly conditioned horses, especially youngsters, by not putting them down the line, despite all the publicity over this

- the inability of some judges to see beyond the reputation/name of the handler.

Judges do get a bad press and sour grapes probably has a lot to do with that bad press but I do think that, sometimes, criticism is justified.

However, I have come up with an ingenious idea which will solve this problem, well at least for in hand classes - before entry into the ring handlers and horses are jumbled so that no handler is with thier own entry. That might produce some suprising results!

 

[FMM]

May I just say ( as someone who has not shown in hand for at least 2 years ) some of the handlers are extremely good at their job, can highlight the finest points of their charges and cover up some of the other less attractive features.

Some of the other handlers cannot even recognise the less attractive features of their charges, let alone cover them up!!

And no - I have no idea who you are, so would not dream of putting you into the second category - just highlighting why some handlers do so well. There is an art to showing a horse in hand - it is not all about who can run the fastest around an arena.

I agree about overweight horses in general. THis year many judges for the ridden classes are putting down overweight horses. No idea what the in hand lot are doing though - however, as a lot of these judges do both ridden and in hand, I suspect things are getting better. I hope so.