'The Good Old Days' entry level jumping

[khalswitz]

Hardly anyone had their own transport and so hacked along to the show, rucksack on my back with the grooming kit, ponies feed and treats and my picnic of course.

OMG this!!! I hacked my horse to an agri show in the summer - he was perfect, queued up behind the cattle trailers at the entrance to get in. The response I had from the show secretary etc was 'that is far too dangerous, you should;t be riding him to a show, no one has ever done it int eh history of the show'. I thought it was all a bit melodramatic to be honest - it was only three miles, and only the last half mile had any traffic at all, and that was within first a 40 then a 30 zone!!! And I was sure they'd have had people riding to the show in the past... my PC handbook talks about hacking to hunt meets etc and the pace at which to ride - it was obviously a 'done thing'.

 

[slumdog]

I remember saving my dinner money through the week so I could pay the £3 transport fee to the local show on a Sunday, ponies were packed in a converted cattle wagon and the kids travelled in the Luton above the ponies!

 

[JCWHITE]

Memory lane indeed, thanks for all your thoughts.
Gymkhana was the way to go back then.
I remember Junior Foxhunter or Junior Open BSJA, JC or JA ponies.
From horses, Newcomers and Foxhunter, jumped three clears at City of Birmingham to go to Wembley 1978.
These days my entries are quite different, enter by the previous Monday, all on line, very modern era.

 

[wench]

But the "good old days" were far better obviously....

 

[j1ffy]

Memory lane indeed...! I remember when my friends and I used to talk in awe about people 'going affiliated' - it started at 3'6" then and we used to do 3'3" unaffiliated on our 14.2s and occasionally attempt a 3'6" to prove that maybe we could affiliate if only we had the money, transport (and talent - the 3'6" attempts generally ended in failure ). The village shows were great, usually in a random field or on the village green with dodgy ground and welly wanging next to the show jumping. I don't remember a lot of dressage going on, my 14.2 would only canter on the left lead, and people who could ride 'on the bit' were few and far between!

 

[marmalade76]

...and people who could ride 'on the bit' were few and far between!

Because no one was bothered about riding on the bit, now 'outline' is an obsession..

 

[Dollysox]

Brilliant thread! I remember (and still have the rosette!) coming second in a Chase Me Charlie at the end of the day when the 13.2 hh riding school pony I was borrowing for the day flew over a 4 ft 6 in fence. I'd never jumped anything higher than 2 ft 9 in before 9in a field using oil cans!), and remember pointing him at the fence and grabbing a handful of mane. I might even have had my eyes shut!

We used to hack to the local annual show, setting off at about 8 in the morning to get there, generally having three refusals at the first fence of at least one of the classes we entered, spending all our pocket money on late entries during the day and getting back at about 7 in the evening. As a non-pony owning obsessive child of non-horsey parents it was the highlight of my horse riding year.

 

[Kikke]

I used to hack at least two hours on my own from the age of 11 every Sunday all summer long. Only wore a head because needed it for the competition. Barefoot cantering down the road. Hivis?? Oh dear those were the days

 

[Pigeon]

lol Yes!!! My mum's transport was a sheep wagon that her dad had 'converted' - cut the roof off and raised it a few inches with wooden planks...

Tbf, we didn't have a trailer/proper car until a couple of years ago, and we used to hack to everything! Wouldn't do it now though, I think you get more worried about risks as you get older.

 

[TarrSteps]

Was that a bad thing??? Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves! Today all I see when out and even on this very forum is people getting stressed because they are having issues this isnt going right etc etc and the lower the level the more you get .There is in my opinion a lot more bad riding today as at the lower levels you can get away with it more.

I didn't say it was! I'm probably still a bit "agricultural" myself. But I get a bit irritated when I hear people banging on about how wonderfully everyone rode in the age of the dinosaurs. I might not be able to trust my memory but I have photos to prove it wasn't necessarily so!

I think lots of things have changed - more people coming late to riding, less "hacking friendly" main roads, great population density in more suburban environments etc. It's not so simple as saying everyone used to be able to ride and now no one can.

(I did not grown up in the UK, obviously, but it was the same where I was from. It was not uncommon to have "schooling" shows that went up to 4', although the quality of course could be interesting, to say the least! That's a thing of the past in most areas now.)

 

[siennamum]

Well at the small RC show I am jumping at in the picture above, I was shortly followed into the ring by Caroline Bradley. If you were jumping at Opens or competitive at 14.2, even unaffiliated you were fairly tidy. There was the hold and fire brigade, and not many people could (or cared about) get a horse on the bit, but standards seemed higher as there were so few people doing it.

I found in the annals of the BE database, the running order from a section at Brigstock when I was competing there, and it was all pro's with a few YR types, like Karen Straker.

At local shows/gymnkhanas etc you saw some sights but there wasn't the proliferation of shocking riding and management you see nowadays as there wasn't the proliferation of horses. I have seen worse recently at local shows. (people competing 3 year olds, saddles which don't fit, horrendous shoeing, wormy, poor, lame horses)

In the 'good old days', there were large numbers of interfering but seriously knowledgeable people who would be properly integrated into the local horsey scene. When I was growing up I was a few miles from Sylvia Stanier, Josephine Knowles, Anne Maxwell, Jonny Wrathall and Sue Muirhead. Our PC was trained by Lady Mary Rose Wiliams. I live near Bristol now, and with the exception of some local dressage and eventing riders, there simply isn't anyone who trains who is of that calibre, or who is involved with the PC, the local horse scene or just gives freely of their time.

There are hundreds of people on the local facebook pages whose lack of knowledge is shocking tbh. The local 'experts' are trained to BHSAI and they really are top of the pile. There isn't really anyone else. When I first came to this part of the world I thought it was a regional difference and I think that is true in part, really though I think it's just how things have changed.

 

[humblepie]

Siennamum - my only instruction as a child was Pony Club and our pony club had Mrs Sivewright and her mother instructing from time to time and that was for us children not on teams or with flash ponies or anything. As an adult when I show jumped I seldom had lessons and it probably did show in my lack of style but horse went in a simple snaffle without any need for gadgets. As you indicate as the unaffiliated opens were decent sized people did generally mix between affiliated and unaffiliated and we had horses that were jumping Newcomers and Fox doing the big open at local shows. It wasn't pothunting, it was the standard it was at.

 

[Maesfen]

I see, so you would basically stick At unaffiliated until ready to make move to affiliated, rather than having an affiliated version of pretty much everything unaffilated nowadays?

Yes and it was a real achievement to become sufficiently proficient too. It meant people learnt the basics properly at local shows until they were ready and you certainly didn't see some awful riding that you see nowadays because people haven't bothered to learn enough before competing.

Sorry, off soap box now but it's a big bugbear of mine. You should be proficient in something before attempting to affilliate, it's not as if there aren't enough unaffilliated competitions where you can learn. Learn your trade at home before competing, it will give you a much better base of experience.

 

[Jo_x]

Yes and it was a real achievement to become sufficiently proficient too. It meant people learnt the basics properly at local shows until they were ready and you certainly didn't see some awful riding that you see nowadays because people haven't bothered to learn enough before competing.

Sorry, off soap box now but it's a big bugbear of mine. You should be proficient in something before attempting to affilliate, it's not as if there aren't enough unaffilliated competitions where you can learn. Learn your trade at home before competing, it will give you a much better base of experience.

Learning your trade at home before competing and learning unaffiliated before going affiliated are two completely different kettles of fish, surely? Learning at home first I completely agree with, unaffiliated before affiliated not so much - given that courses are far more regulated at affiliated competitions and you can get some seriously dodgy courses at unaffiliated shows, its often better to go affiliated asap so you can learn round good quality courses, rather than scaring yourself and the horse with dodgy striding

 

[Maesfen]

Learning your trade at home before competing and learning unaffiliated before going affiliated are two completely different kettles of fish, surely? Learning at home first I completely agree with, unaffiliated before affiliated not so much - given that courses are far more regulated at affiliated competitions and you can get some seriously dodgy courses at unaffiliated shows, its often better to go affiliated asap so you can learn round good quality courses, rather than scaring yourself and the horse with dodgy striding

Has course building really sunk so low now? I don't know as I don't follow local jumping now.
Back in the days, even at the gymkhana up the road, you always had decent courses to jump; yes, some would be harder than others but you never seemed to get bad or dodgy courses at all and nearly all would be built by people that rode, perhaps that's the difference now. Perhaps it just comes down to learning a craft (course building) properly in the first place before you inflict it on someone else and the shows that use dodgy CBs not be supported for that reason.

 

[khalswitz]

Learning your trade at home before competing and learning unaffiliated before going affiliated are two completely different kettles of fish, surely? Learning at home first I completely agree with, unaffiliated before affiliated not so much - given that courses are far more regulated at affiliated competitions and you can get some seriously dodgy courses at unaffiliated shows, its often better to go affiliated asap so you can learn round good quality courses, rather than scaring yourself and the horse with dodgy striding

This. We don't have many XC course up here in NE Scotland, and some of the unaff ones are DREADFUL. I went to one in spring where the ground was so bad you had to trot whole portions of the course, and take offs/landings were a mess. So when I can go affiliated at 80cm and jump round a well-maintained course, even if I'm rubbish, isn't it better for my horse than trying to go round a bad unaff course and put him off?

TBH, I wouldn't have the intention of going affiliated BD or BS until he was jumping well at 1m/1.05m unaff, or doing Novice with decent scores, because I think it's a lot of money to go affiliated if there is enough unaff competition at your level, so you want to be doing well when you start out aff. However, when you can do BE80/BE90 on day tickets and jump round a much better maintained course, with better standard of judging in the DR, then why the hell not? BE80 especially is a (T) for a reason - to train people!! Why you expect anyone going round a specially named Training height class to be expert I don't know.

 

[Orangehorse]

Lots of local shows were affiliated, I used to do Junior Foxhunter. I looked at any old photo of my pony and the fence looks huge. At Eventing the classes were Novice, Intermediate and Open and the fences were 3' 6" cross country and up to 3' 9" show jumping. I remember going into my first affiated Novice Eventing class and thinking that the show jumps were the biggest I had ever seen.

There was one local farmer who used to turn out every Saturday and run the gymkhana games for nearly all the local shows all over the county and once there were 60 in the Musical Sacks! Gymkhana competition was fierce. I didn't ever do a dressage test at Pony Club - dressage was for the "team" ridiers.
I just got on and did show jumping, gymkhana and hunting and did a bit of "schooling" in the field.

The costs of run'ningt a local show are now very high and it is so difficult to find people to help. For hunts it is a lot simpler to organise a Pleasure Ride than bother with hunter trials with having to get judges, etc.

 

[DragonSlayer]

Do they even call them Gymkhanas these days? All the one around here are usually called 'Open Show'..not seen the word Gymkhana for many years....

...and yes, certainly the attitude towards jumping seems to have changed, you only have to read the Jill books to know that jumping 4ft and over on a 13.2 was the 'done thing' and a pony aged 4 should have all his education behind him!

 

[Old Bat]

This is my mum, aged 15, doing an event with the pony club team, in the mid seventies. Terrifying!!

Errm, any idea where that was? Looks very familiar from when I was PC eventing at the same time, even down to the wire! Or perhaps that was just the standard!

 

[Pigeon]

Errm, any idea where that was? Looks very familiar from when I was PC eventing at the same time, even down to the wire! Or perhaps that was just the standard!

Not certain, she grew up in Newbury so perhaps near there? I'll ask her!

lol At the wire comment, it's all very different these days!

 

[Old Bat]

Here we are, rubbish position! It was a riding school pony, 14hh in an open eventing team at Eridge or Firle in the mid 70's. The jump had been badly crunched just before me and tied together with baler twine, take off very carved up and little pony got hugely deep and cat jumped. I was so proud of the borrowed skull cap! There was a very similar ditch jump in the same course which scared the pants off me but rode better than that bloomin' hay rack.

 

[siennamum]

gorgeous pony. we must have been PC evening in Warwickshire at a similar time, though I was more Northamptonshire.

 

[stencilface]

Has course building really sunk so low now? I don't know as I don't follow local jumping now.
.

Twice at a local showcross I have questioned the SJ course. First time they had a filler under the back bar of the oxer, when I queried it they said it was to make sure the riders were being accurate. I was like wtf?! However I was too weak to argue and went in anyway, I didn't have it down but a good proportion did. Second time, everyone was having one oxer down, looking at it from the warm up it was obvious the back rail was lower. This time i put my foot down and demanded the fat lazy course builder got out of his cabin, despite him protesting he'd set it up correctly. Sure enough I was right, he likely had set it correctly, but it hadn't been put back up properly.

Same centre also didn't (or still doesn't, not sure) pin down its portable Xc fences, causing one horse to get its back end stuck in a table which flipped over.

So in short, you need to have your wits about you and not be fobbed off when you're right!

 

[Maesfen]

Sorry, I always understood an oxer did have a lower back rail (but same height as the front rail) so if you viewed it from the side, the shape was a triangle; is that not the case now? Surely it would be more like a parallel if the back rail was the same height or have they changed all the terms now as well?

 

[slumdog]

Twice at a local showcross I have questioned the SJ course. First time they had a filler under the back bar of the oxer, when I queried it they said it was to make sure the riders were being accurate. I was like wtf?! However I was too weak to argue and went in anyway, I didn't have it down but a good proportion did. Second time, everyone was having one oxer down, looking at it from the warm up it was obvious the back rail was lower. This time i put my foot down and demanded the fat lazy course builder got out of his cabin, despite him protesting he'd set it up correctly. Sure enough I was right, he likely had set it correctly, but it hadn't been put back up properly.

Same centre also didn't (or still doesn't, not sure) pin down its portable Xc fences, causing one horse to get its back end stuck in a table which flipped over.

So in short, you need to have your wits about you and not be fobbed off when you're right!

My local riding club is rather proud of the fact that they build to 'catch people out' resulting in at least 2 broken legs (people) and a horrific horse fall this season. If you want something re measuring or question the course building you are just told all complaints need a £50 deposit!

 

[dieseldog]

Has course building really sunk so low now? I don't know as I don't follow local jumping now.
Back in the days, even at the gymkhana up the road, you always had decent courses to jump; yes, some would be harder than others but you never seemed to get bad or dodgy courses at all and nearly all would be built by people that rode, perhaps that's the difference now. Perhaps it just comes down to learning a craft (course building) properly in the first place before you inflict it on someone else and the shows that use dodgy CBs not be supported for that reason.

Yes and No. I walked a RC XC and SJ course the day before the comp recently and didn't go as it was so badly built. But in the old days you would also get bad courses. I did PC open area SJ one year and there were big ruts in front of a fence which tripped my poor horse up and put me in bed for 6 weeks not being able to walk, I was too young to say anything.

I think the lack of entries in unaff put people off, it is no fun competing in a class with 2 people in it. Go to Wales and West and you will have over 100 in the same height class and win money. Entry fees are also similar, so way pay roughly the same for what is in one case just a clear round?

When you talk about PC trainers I used to have lessons with Dr Woodward, Eric Winter and some Olympic dressage rider.

 

[stencilface]

Sorry, I always understood an oxer did have a lower back rail (but same height as the front rail) so if you viewed it from the side, the shape was a triangle; is that not the case now? Surely it would be more like a parallel if the back rail was the same height or have they changed all the terms now as well?

I don't get the triangle bit? The pole was on lower holes, like how you would do a mini hogs back but without the front rail.

 

[dieseldog]

I didn't say it was! I'm probably still a bit "agricultural" myself. But I get a bit irritated when I hear people banging on about how wonderfully everyone rode in the age of the dinosaurs. I might not be able to trust my memory but I have photos to prove it wasn't necessarily so!

I think lots of things have changed - more people coming late to riding, less "hacking friendly" main roads, great population density in more suburban environments etc. It's not so simple as saying everyone used to be able to ride and now no one can.

(I did not grown up in the UK, obviously, but it was the same where I was from. It was not uncommon to have "schooling" shows that went up to 4', although the quality of course could be interesting, to say the least! That's a thing of the past in most areas now.)

I don't think anyone has said everyone rode wonderfully in the past. Just that the classes went a lot bigger as there was more demand for it. If you went evening jumping, you wouldn't get home until midnight and on a weekend show you would be jumping the last class at 8pm or later. I think that was a combination of people not having transport, and not needing to affiliate as there was something for you to do. A bit of a vicious circle.

I hope now with the relaxation of the BS 'not allowed to win money at unaffiliated' rule and the threat of all rounds being recorded on BS records it will reignite the unaffiliated scene.

 

[gunnergundog]

As far as eventing is concerned, I started off when novice was the norm. People learnt their craft for XC in the hunting field; there were very few island fences though and the jumps were more rider frighteners, not so technical by any means but possibly larger dimensions. Not saying the riding was any better,,,,,it was just different! Perhaps it comes down to the fact that hunting was different then too.............no hunt fences, just following a line.

 

[TarrSteps]

Well at the small RC show I am jumping at in the picture above, I was shortly followed into the ring by Caroline Bradley. If you were jumping at Opens or competitive at 14.2, even unaffiliated you were fairly tidy. There was the hold and fire brigade, and not many people could (or cared about) get a horse on the bit, but standards seemed higher as there were so few people doing it.

I found in the annals of the BE database, the running order from a section at Brigstock when I was competing there, and it was all pro's with a few YR types, like Karen Straker.

At local shows/gymnkhanas etc you saw some sights but there wasn't the proliferation of shocking riding and management you see nowadays as there wasn't the proliferation of horses. I have seen worse recently at local shows. (people competing 3 year olds, saddles which don't fit, horrendous shoeing, wormy, poor, lame horses)

In the 'good old days', there were large numbers of interfering but seriously knowledgeable people who would be properly integrated into the local horsey scene. When I was growing up I was a few miles from Sylvia Stanier, Josephine Knowles, Anne Maxwell, Jonny Wrathall and Sue Muirhead. Our PC was trained by Lady Mary Rose Wiliams. I live near Bristol now, and with the exception of some local dressage and eventing riders, there simply isn't anyone who trains who is of that calibre, or who is involved with the PC, the local horse scene or just gives freely of their time.

There are hundreds of people on the local facebook pages whose lack of knowledge is shocking tbh. The local 'experts' are trained to BHSAI and they really are top of the pile. There isn't really anyone else. When I first came to this part of the world I thought it was a regional difference and I think that is true in part, really though I think it's just how things have changed.

I would definitely agree with this, especially the bit about "leaders" in the community who were forthright with their opinions, even if they had no official connection to the riders involved. I think the lack of this is also connected to the explosion of adult riders though, as it's easy to lecture a young inexperienced person but adults tend not to take it well and will shoot back that they have read this book or seen that DVD.