Q about Gatcombe times

[BronsonNutter]

Is it just me who thinks that the times for Gatcombe are completely ridiculous?

Why is it that, at an event who are running a total of 5 sections, 3 of which are championships, everyone has to do their dressage the day before SJ and XC? I can understand that some may need to do theirs the day before - in which case they could ask who can - but to make everyone do it a day early seems a bit over the top... Especially when onsite stabling is so expensive (think it's £115? according to BE) and you have a yardful of horses at home, no staff, live ~4 hours away and are only taking the one horse (it's not me who'd going btw, I am far too rubbish )

Does this sort of thing happen every year, or is it just a one off?

 

[elizabeth1]

I think you will find it is literally a question of timing for the cross country and show jumping! In a championship class all dressage must be judged by the same judge.The dressage tests at this level are much longer than those at ordinary novice one day events-so lets say they can run a test every 10 minutes.Show jumping will be at 2-3 minute intervals and cross country at 3 -5 minute intervals at an event like this.So if you have 50 + competitors you cannot get them all through dressage and onto the show jumping and cross country in the same day.At one day events you will have say 6 sections of novice dressage under 6 separate judges and the sections will come forward to show jumping and cross country in a scrambled order over the sections ie no 1 section a is follwed by number 2 section b and so on.

 

[oldvic]

The sections for the advanced are not big enough to split over 2 days - why pay judges expenses for 2 days unnecessarily? The sj and xc for these sections are over before lunch so only a few would be able to do their dressage on Saturday morning anyway so it doesn't merit the cost. The open is all on 1 day to save bringing officials back on Sunday with the additional cost. There are a few intermediates doing Sunday dressage as the class is too big for 1 day. People in a championship should expect to run over more than 1 day and many advanced classes run over 2 days like Aston-le-Walls last week.