Poor dressage judging

Lyric_

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27 July 2016
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Hi, I competed at the Trailblazers Dressage championships at the weekend and was in the prelim section. The first day we revieced 66% which is what we would normally get from a BD judge, however on the second day where I rode much softer more accurate test I only got 62% and was one of the last in the class! She made all kind of silly comments which were not needed and marked me down for things that were stupid? She put a huge emphasise on more suppleness, thoroughness and working from behind which is fair enough, but I saw some people getting in the top ten who had none of these things and I don't think they really knew what they were. I had other people complain to us, one person saying 'I did my best ever test and only got 59%' and someone else saying 'I thought I rode a much better test than the percentage' and 'she only seemed to like warm blood types'. All of these people were familiar with BD and were realistic about scores so all of this seems a bit ridiculas! We did not pay vast amounts of money to Trailblazers and travelled for 4 hours for that level of judging. I'm very disappointed and will not be attending again.
 
If it was a listed judge and you have the test on video then you can make a formal complaint to BD.
Alternatively, put the vid on here and see what the dressage experts think before you make a formal complaint.
Poor judging does happen even with listed judges, it's rare but can happen.
 
If you know the judges name you can check if they are listed by going on the BD website, there is the option to search by judge's name (you can also see what list level they are at as well).
 
My horse is super consistent and I have scores varying up to 13% a time so it does depend on the judge, it's subjective to a degree so you are always going to get some more tough than others!
I will say a few friends who compete low level bd went to the trailblazers final and all of them scored their lowest ever scores!
 
Someone I know got a very high score at novice and elem of very high 70s. So maybe not all classes were like that?
 
I know tests can look very different from how they feel, but the people I was with said the test looked far better than yesterday and I left the arena feeling really happy about it. That particular judge generally used a lower set of marks as I saw from the day before which is fine, but it didn't seem to apply to my class!
 
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