Waiting around to Show Jump. Why?

Would you take your horse?

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Yes, affiliated isn't as bad as unaffiliated
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On the up side when you i go showjumping i can literally decide the day before whether to go or not but dressage i have to book and organise 2-3 weeks in advance. If there is a positive to having to wait around that is it.
 
definately, i hate waiting around until 9pm sometimes freezing in the winter months not knowing how long the class is going to last, all for a jump off that lasts 30 seconds!
 
Or if there are more than 20 people in a class (normal type class, not qualifier etc) then it should automatically be run as a two phase - waiting for jump offs is one of the things I find most annoying
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I would at least like to be given approximate class start times.

FOr instance say there were 6 classes for the day they could say class 1 starts at 9.30 followed by classes 2 and 3 and then class 4 will start at say 1pm or not before 1pm.

At least then if you are only going for the later classes you know you don't need to get there before 1pm.

We have missed classes before when the entries were low and they were running really early.
 
yes, absolutely, I love indoor sj but have to be desperate to do it because it just takes so long when the classes are busy.
 
If they'd at least say class starts at 9am, class 2 will not start before say 10am, class 3 not start before.

I hate trying to guess what time say the 4th class of the day might start, if at least you knew it wouldn't start before say 1pm you could plan accordingly. okay you might still end up hanging around a bit but you'd have a start time of sorts.

Same reason I dislike Hunter Trials!
 
No, I'd hate it. I like with BSJA being able to decide to go on the morning, turn up, compete just by getting my number, pay later, etc.. I have got turning up at the right time down to a fine art now, I do it by instinct and usually arrive 40 mins before I am due to jump. On arrival, I immediately panic, walk the course, enter, get horse out, warm up and then jump. Perfect.

Entering in advance would mean deciding what classes and shows to go to several days before, phoning up for times the night before when I am doing other stuff, etc..

Everyone knows classes start late and British Novice always takes 1 1/2 - 2 hours. And never starts before 10am no matter what is says on the schedule.
 
you guys make me laugh, I run lots of BSJA shows and would love to tell staff what time they would finish, and plan days properly. Even when the schedule plainly states that the first class will start at 9.30am we are often sitting around waiting for the fist competitors to arrive, at 9.30am they start to arrive, potter round walking the course, get on about 9.50am, warm up for a bit etc. What should the show organiser do? We should tell them that they are too late to enter, but, we do need to make money and want people to return otherwise there won't be any BSJA competitions. The bottom line is that showjumpers want it all ways, they don't want to tell the show centre that they are entering but they want to know when they will jump! If you are paying staff by the hour and have very few competitors it is just not business sense to say that e.g. class 4 won't start before 1pm. If you have only had a few entries in the first three classes then people are just siting around getting fed up (including those who want to jump class 4 having jumped class 3 at 11am). I just ask people to ring me on the day of the show, and even then its a guesstimate. I have thought long and hard about this matter and cannot come up with any solution.
 
close the first class, you only need to do it once and they will get the idea.

On my schedules I clearly put that the class will start promptly

or put no entries for the first class later than the start or a certain time.

Trouble is there is nothing worse for the people that are there on time or are in the later classes and you soon put them off hence losing you money anyway.

Of 3 of my local centres 2 are quite strict, one isnt. I preferentially travel further to the strict ones because I am less likely to have to stand around for ages.

timings are also often delayed by people having a lot of trouble in the clear round and imo really need to be hiring the school first or turn up at the start of the clear round when noone else is there.

I do ring on the day of the show but find this rarely works for us. We have everything ready to go but the time we would need to leave to have time to warm up etc is the time when noone has turned up yet so noone knows how busy it is!
 
Yes defo, did a Winter Novice and we were given times, it was fantastic, no waiting around and yes did run on time
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Go Merrist Wood
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They also do pre entries and give estimated start time of classes, fantastic I say
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Wow, 82% of you say you would prefer to have times, we do pre enter most other equine events so why not Show jumping?

Only 18% of you like it the way it is so is that not a clear signal to organizers to think again.

I always say if it is not broke why fix it, but in this case i feel it is broke and it seems the majority of you agree.
 
Yes I hate waiting around and often don't even bother go to the show for that very reason. Also is the reason why I love eventing so much
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i hate waiting around and actually don't go show jumping at all because of it.

i would rather hire an arena, set the course up, jump and leave!
 
Yes. It is one of the big reasons why I dont do a lot of showjumping. Too much waiting around freezing cold for 2 seconds in the arena. I also find it infuriating that they cant even do a 'will not start before' time. I tried to do this when I was on a riding club committee and it was dismissed to be quite honest because everyone wanted to go home early!
 
I have just joined BSJA & was intrigued to see how it all worked having only evented & dressaged before. So why are the majority of entries on the day? Must make your job a nightmare as you dont know if you will get 10 or 100, so I can see that you can't really do "won't start before" Most unaf is pre-entry so wondered why BSJA isn't the same? Must admit because its all new & exciting I don't mind the waiting about, maybe in time it won't seem like so much fun!
 
A will not start before time would be my preference, just to give me an idea whether it will clash with another class and which I should warm up for first etc.

If venues offered good incentives for entries before the day then it would be easier to predict. Our RC offers a discount for before the day entries.
 
I dont know how this could be done... I mean, organisers have no idea how many people will get into the jump off etc. so how would they work times?

I think the best way is to simply to put on the schedule at say every 3 classes interval - "class -- will not start before 11am" for example.
 
In an ideal world this would be fantastic, we manage it at area competitions after all and if everything was run tow-phase then you wouldn't have a prob with waiting around for jump-offs or mallocating time s for these. the only problem is you try getting show -jumpers to enter in advance! We tried it a couple of times and it is hopeless. Not sure it is a fixable one, which is a shame as I would SJ a lot more in winter if it wasn't for the hanging around.
 
M-M some do times for the first class I think so that they have an idea of how many in that and less people entering half way through the class etc.

Or as pep says run it 2 phase which I think probably works better indoors in winter anyway!
 
QR

Our Riding Club holds some SJ In early January and we always put times for EACH competitor on it. It saves a lot of hassle and we have run it a few times like this with no hassle. People were ready on time for a chance and we also ran to time if not early in some places.

www.tvrc.co.uk January showjumping at BCA TIMES!!!!

As far as timings for jump offs....you allow a possible average time for two phase for every competitor, it worked fine for us.
 
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