Registering 138cm as a horse BSJA - says you can but...

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mystiandsunny

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In the rule book it says that you can either register as a horse or a pony and that the 'horse' category carries no height limit, upper or lower. I want to jump my 13.2hh myself so she needs to be registered as a horse. However, I seem to remember a rule about only being allowed to jump in open competitions if I do so? Cannot find anything about it in the current rule book - anyone know if this is still true? Wouldn't matter if we did the Intro competitions as they're all opens but there's only a few of those around..
 
I think their notional winnings transfer over so it depends on how much they've won. If they've got no winnings they can jump in the novice classes as far as i know.
 
Ponies can't jump senior foxhunters but I believe can jump all other classes (dependent on their winnings)

TBH though you may get some comments about jumping a 13.2 in seniors from fellow competitors. I had a pony that got measured out of 148s (by 1cm!) and I used to get a hard time for jumping him (ligitimately) in senior classes. We carried his life height with us in the end!!
 
I jump my 14h in senior classes. I haven't really had anyone give me a hard time. He is actually very popular at shows and gets a lot of people coming over to pat him, it is a little nerve racking sometimes as I always feel we have to prove ourselves!

A few judges remembered us from our junior days and the first time they saw us called me in to check if he was now registered as a horse. Some competitors may comment but only because they think a pony will have an unfair advantage.

Good luck with your pony!
 
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TBH though you may get some comments about jumping a 13.2 in seniors from fellow competitors. I had a pony that got measured out of 148s (by 1cm!) and I used to get a hard time for jumping him (ligitimately) in senior classes. We carried his life height with us in the end!!

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I don't mind that - I'm not too big for her - I'm 5ft4 (and she's stocky, and closer to 13.3 than 13.2), and I've seen children riding ponies who were far more over sized for them than I am for her! She's fun to ride and if I'm allowed to jump her in those classes, who cares what others say? She'll never get higher than about 1m/1m10 but at least we could have fun below that.
 
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I jump my 14h in senior classes. I haven't really had anyone give me a hard time. He is actually very popular at shows and gets a lot of people coming over to pat him, it is a little nerve racking sometimes as I always feel we have to prove ourselves!

A few judges remembered us from our junior days and the first time they saw us called me in to check if he was now registered as a horse. Some competitors may comment but only because they think a pony will have an unfair advantage.

Good luck with your pony!

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That's good to hear - I know ponies are quicker, but they do have an overall height disadvantage!
 
I'd ring or email the BSJA to check, but yes, I think you can do any horse classes except Senior Foxhunter on a pony. She's only likely to have problems with courses built to a horse stride, and getting out of a combination over a built-up oxer may be tricky. It's worth schooling over senior courses to give her (and yourself) confidence before being faced with a double she can't stretch to.
 
a 13.2 might be able to get away with an extra little stride if it needs to. I'm hoping to jump a 14hh pony in seniors and i have thought it might be hard to put up with peoples comments and dirty looks but then again at most of the amateur shows its ponies winning the class and my 16.2hh usually looks massive compare to the other competitors
 
yee go ponies they are so cool
im 27 and still jump a 14 hh pony alough only in unaffilated
i have a pony jockey for her
but if i diddnt i would jump her affilated seniers
i aften play down horse distances lengthening for one or shortning for 2 she can do both
good luck with your pony and have fun
 
my 13.1 is registered in seniors although as we have won quite a bit we get a lot of nasty comments from other competitors which i dont understand as my pony is a superstar but a child would not be able to hold her, i struggle as it is. Although we've had some really nice people (coinsidently most have been instructors) who have been so nice and encouraging
 
I'm going to be doing the same as you - mine is 13.1h and up for it! Will let you know how we get on if you like? Going to do a few day tickets first, and take my Dad with me for moral support!!!
 
I'm planning on joining you as well!! Kizzy's 14hh, she's still in recovery work for her injury/op, but once we're up & running I'm going to register her, we train with Paul Crago & he is really encouraging, we did discuss the difficulty with striding in combinations, he said he builds the fences for us on a horse stride for our lessons anyway, of course we will be limited with the classes we can enter, but as its just for my own enjoyment, what does it matter?? Wouldn't it be cool to meet up?? We can have a bit of a senior pony bonding!!
 
There only used to be a handful of ponies in senior classes! I enjoyed being in the minority!!

My 14h puts an extra stride in his combinations. He gets placed consistantly in 1.15m classes and has also jumped clears round 1.20m and 1.25m. He manages to do the combinations even at this height with the extra stride. It depends on the pony. This does go against us in jump offs. He goes more like a horse than a pony and doesn't really like to be pushed around in a gallop so I am at no advantage.

I would like to start something up for senior riders who have ponies. Not sure how in demand it would be.
 
It would be great to have some kind of seniors on ponies class there must be loads of people out there who would be interested. It's really encouraging to hear your 14h jumps round bigger tracks cos i was a bit worried i might be limited to 90 and 1m but hopefully he'll be able to cope a bit bigger too.
 
I have discussed the senior pony thing with Talavera II & also Paul Crago in some detail, he's on some BSJA committee. Both explained that we would need a large number of senior ponies in one area regularly to make this viable. Also the difficulty would be getting the show centres to run the classes in the first place, insufficient entries = not enough profit. Paul said that if we could get a decent sponsor & the chance to run qualifiers for something like Scope, then we would be able to lobby the BSJA to change the rule book & tack onto the Intro shows. In his last email he said he thought it was pretty much a non starter. He did suggest maybe organising something for ourselves, like a day of pony jumping with a decent course builder?? Not the same as regular shows, but what do you lot think?? Might be able to chat him up to help a bit.
 
It's so good to hear that so many of you do this and it works well! We need to keep posting and compare notes I think! My girl is just starting out - spent years getting her to grow up to a shape where a saddle would fit for more than 4 months, then wasted time looking for a pony rider - but that just never seemed to work out. She is such fun to jump and is slowly giving me all my confidence back.

Interestingly, she has the same stride length as my 15hh and can lengthen further than my horse due to the amazing amount of power in her quarters. Unaffiliated, she will just lengthen or put two in if there's an oxer. My long-term goal is to jump 1m05 open classes. If she gets higher than that I will be ecstatic but that's what I've aimed at for 2010!
 
Where are you all based?

Maybe we could do some kind of 'showcase' to try and create some interest. They have children on horses so why not adults on ponies?

If we could find a central venue, try and get a sponsor and some media coverage etc we might be able to pull something off. Could admin start an adults on ponies sticky maybe?
 
I'd have preferred to have jumped my mare in Ponies as she found the horse striding a struggle above Discovery.

Unfortunately she's registered as 14.3hh so I think we'd flunk out there
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But I have a youngster who's 14.1 1/2hh and if she doesn't grow any taller I'd certainly be interested in doing Adults on Pony classes.

This would add another element to all us adults who love their M&M ponies
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I can't imagine why any fully grown adult would want to jump a 138 pony in bsja horse classes if you cant bear to sell him let someone's child ride him and get the fun that way, and as for anyone thinking he has an advantage, he has to cope with going through horse distances it should't be allowed.
 
We need to find out how many people are interested, if we have enough people maybe we can try and get a major show to hold a class just for adults on ponies. For example Scope/Festival or Amature champs. If we could find our own sponsor for it we may be able to persuade someone.
 
There is no reason why a 138cm can't safely cope with horse distances round 90cm/1m senior classes.

Maybe some people can only afford one horse, or maybe the adult is small and rides the height of 'horse' most suited to them.

I would certainly not expect a child to cope with my 14h pony as he is difficult and extremely quirky.
 
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