long reins at badders?

[Grey_Eventer]

watching badminton and have noticed how long a lot of the riders ride, alot of them near the buckle, obviouslt they need to give the horse its head but going into the fence this looks odd to me. ive always been taught to keep your reins short and give when you need to, i.e over a drop, but a lot of these riders seem to be riding with very lond reins?
whats correct and whats not?

 

[arty101]

I'v been watching that aswell I think they all are a little over the top with the amount of rein they give but then as the jumps are so big and wide i suppose they need to give with the reins alot more than we do going over the much smaller jumps also i think they give the reins to keep them going because if you sudenly shortend your reins the horses would obviously slow down and those guys need to go as fast as they can!! Thats my opinion on it xxxxx

 

[Cliqmo]

It may be down to the individual quirks of the horse so best not to copy them if your RI is telling you otherwise

I think it is important to remember that these horses have a superb level of training (and sometimes some almighty strong bit/noseband combinations!) which are critical for control when tackling the combinations and technicality of the XC course! However this means that when going into straightforward fences which don't require the horse to collect and listen- and where doing so would only cost them extra time- the rider has to leave the horses mouth well alone in order to keep up the pace. This is probably what you see when they seem to have looser-than-normal reins

 

[LEC]

You can only do this if you position is really secure and on the whole it tends to be over certain kinds of fences where they are released mid air.