Stress-age!

[JadeyB]

Now i DO enjoy dressage, and have always maintained you need to have a bit of a thick skin and remember your test sheet is just someone's opinion.... BUT... I must admit to getting really frustrated sometimes.

my friend and i went to a competiton yesterday, our ponies were fab 2, the sun was shining so overall it was a great day out but things bothered me, enough to feel the need to post this! one thing is quite common but irritating, the old 'riding in qualifiers at a level much lower than you compete at' (Elementary riders in a Prelim qualifier) but the more annoying thing was that i was watching the rider who was in before me and although most of the test was lovely, the horse went disunited behind both times they struck off into canter, they then did a 20m circle in the wrong place on the first canter, and she halted too early at the end... bearing all of this in mind i was shocked to see that she got 70%!

This is honestly not sour grapes, admittedly i did feel like my test was better than the marks we got, and my friend said the same thing about her test, but i just can't believe this person got the highest marks in the whole class because i later watched several more nice tests with no errors. Had the judge fallen asleep during the test!

Very confusing and frustrating.

Rant over!

 

[be positive]

It is the judges opinion on the day and their expectations will vary to some extent.
The horse you describe that made some errors but still got 70% may have lost a few marks for errors but without those errors would have scored far higher, a well ridden test that pushes for 9s may get the odd 4 if things go wrong but the overall % will still be better than the "nice" accurate test that is ridden safely and scores 6 or 7 for each movement.
To achieve a higher score you need to be riding for those 8s or 9s taking the odd risk and being happy to get a 3or 4 if things go wrong, by doing this you will find you will get improved scores.