strange rule decisions at burghley.....

georgiegirl

georgiegirl

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I'm sorry I havent read the fei rule book cover to cover so what im about to talk about may be a total load of rubbish but did anyone else think there were some odd decisions rule wise in the dressage?

Mary king for example finishing her test right to the final halt and then being allowed to go back and complete a whole movement she MISSED OUT? Its not as if that was a small directional blip? what if you missed a sj out? would they let you go jump it at the end of the round? clearly not!

would the same decision have been made for a lesser known rider? Like i say, im not au fait with the fei rule book so this might be the norm but its something ive never heard of and it left me slightly confused!

also WFP's dressage where he didnt start within the specified amount of time. again in sj this means elimination. I thought the same applied to dressage?
 
I think with Mary they had been ringing the bell to try to tell her, but she was concentrating so hard that she didn't hear it, hence their decision. Also, she'd only missed out the penultimate(ish) movement, not something minutes before. I think it was a good decision tbh, after all she got her 2 penalties anyway.
I've never seen anyone eliminated for not starting within 45 secs of the dressage bell. maybe he was only a second or two over, I haven't counted! Again, a good decision - I think it would have been unbelievably harsh (and probably led to a furore) to eliminate anyone for such a minor infringement, it shouldn't make a difference whether it's a top pro (and crowd favourite) or a lesser rider.
 
I thought it was a very odd decision. I'd have expected her simply to have had a zero score for the missed out movement.

Quite right that Pippa had her 20 penalties removed, from what I could see Mirage d'Elle did not step backwards at all.
 
Thistle said:
The rule for FEI dressage after 45 secs is MAY be elim, not will be so it's judges discretion. Apparently the crowd were still trying to get seated and being noisy.
Click to expand...

The commentator said that each of the judges dropped 2 marks for the late start, so that would hurt enough!
 
If you make an error of course the judge rings the bell and you go back and do it and then get penalites for error of course - at lower levels anyway, so presumably it is the same with FEI rules.

The "after 45 seconds" rule seems to be kind, so the judges can have some discretion.
 
I scribe quite a bit, not at this level granted, but am pretty experienced at somewhat advanced levels. We have had this happen where they just don't hear the bell. We end up getting out and waiving them down, and having them start at the beginning of the movement they had done incorrectly or missed. It doesn't matter how far they get before we get their attention. In this case, it was easier to just let her finish and get her attention at the salute.

If there was a rule in place in SJ, that permitted a person to be told they had missed a fence and go back and start over at that point with a penalty, it would be the same thing.
 
As soon as the bell had gone for Mary the judges would have stopped judging. When she was interviewed straight after the test she said she ignored the bell as she thought she was right and that she thought the last flying changes were in the wrong direction! If the Ground Jury had heard that I think a warning would have been in order, after all, ignoring the signal to stop in the jumping phases has serious consequences (potentially E and a yellow card in XC and E for SJ). While it is not dangerous as such to carry on in the dressage, it could have been that they were trying to stop her due to blood on the horse and it could lead to riders taking advantage if something upsets their horse by going "freestyle" to settle it down before going back to finish their test. I know this is unlikely but several top riders have pointed out to me that it is a thought.

The rule for being more than 45 secs after the bell before starting the dressage is an error of course (-2 from each judge) so what the Ground Jury did was correct.
 
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