Dressage What does a £1.5million dressage 4 year old look like? This!

ihatework said:
That’s the thing about dressage.
There is the technical aspect, the FEI directives and the parts that make it ‘sport’ but there is also that element of art that comes into it. Have you ever heard art critics ?

Anyway, I can completely understand how elite dressage can divide opinion.

I personally can’t stand dog showing, but I don’t go onto dog forums and engage in showing threads because, well, it’s not my bag so why waste my time?!
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yes, i always go for the most beautiful impression artistically, they normally come second or third, because without the beauty, technical perfection is nothing to me
 
DabDab said:
Yep, totally agree. And for me I think it is perfectly possible to love grass roots dressage but simultaneously feel like it is completely detached from the the elite version of the sport. It just feels increasingly like it is two different disciplines clinging awkwardly together. And on a soundness-front, while I am pretty unconcerned about elite horses, completely bred for the job, I am much more concerned about 'ordinary' horses who's riders spend a lot of time and training effort trying to make them move like warmbloods (because that is seen as the goal).

Lately I've just been wondering if it would be better to split dressage into the two disciplines it already feels like it is, giving a sport with the current emphasis in the directives, and another with a different emphasis, I'm not sure if it could be done practically, just thinking out loud.
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But surely this is true for most if not all sports? I used to be a keen club tennis player but my level of skill was in a completely different place to those on the pro circuit or indeed some of our better players who had competed at county level in their young days. I still absolutely loved playing though and would play now if it weren't for my achilles tendon injury (sustained whilst playing tennis!). Just an after thought, I have a mass of sports related injuries whereas OH, who is not remotely sporty has never had a broken bone or any other injury, he is, however, as stiff as a board! Clearly neither of us was bred to do sport! I blame my parents.
 
oldie48 said:
But surely this is true for most if not all sports? I used to be a keen club tennis player but my level of skill was in a completely different place to those on the pro circuit or indeed some of our better players who had competed at county level in their young days. I still absolutely loved playing though and would play now if it weren't for my achilles tendon injury (sustained whilst playing tennis!). Just an after thought, I have a mass of sports related injuries whereas OH, who is not remotely sporty has never had a broken bone or any other injury, he is, however, as stiff as a board! Clearly neither of us was bred to do sport! I blame my parents.
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The comparison would be if you could only get to play at top level by having a million pound tennis racket, no matter how skilful you yourself were as a tennis player.
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ycbm said:
The comparison would be if you could only get to play at top level by having a million pound tennis racket, no matter how skilful you yourself were as a tennis player.
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No it wouldn't be. I could buy a million pound horse and probably would fail to get it round a prelim test. Anyway I was responding to the comment that there seems to be two different sports, grass roots and elite and clearly there is. Elite quality horses are expensive, of course they are, but most are not owned by their riders and the riders get the ride on the elite horses because they are talented not because they are rich (well different if you are Laura T) For lots of talented riders it takes a huge amount of slog and good luck to get noticed so they get the owners with the cash to buy the big money horses. Yes, some kids are lucky enough to get a big leg up from wealthy parents (Didn't Pheobe Peter's parents sell their house to buy her her the next pony?) but they still need the talent to get to the top. Many sports are elitist but at least in some of them, if you get to the top, you are extremely well paid, not true of dressage!
 
oldie48 said:
Farouche was 10 and competing at small tour when she sustained a strained fetlock injury which ended her career
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I have a friend who was training with Michael Eilberg at the time who told me that Farouche was on box rest for tendon strain when she went for her lessons, before she was even presented as a young horse. I have no idea if that was true, but can't think why my friend would lie about it.

I was stunned by her when I saw her win the National 5 year old title, but when I saw her warming up for an Inter I at Somerford at 9, I had to double check to make sure Michael was on the same horse. It took at least forty minutes for them to loosen her up, and for much of that time she looked to me like a stiff old donkey. I wasn't at all surprised to see her fail to reach GP.

There's a lot of comment about how Valegro and his training changed dressage for the better, but even he has a callous on his nose where the noseband sat, and he was retired at 14 with a lot of people believing he'd begun to find the work a struggle. Parzival went on to 20, but he is notable by his rarity.

I've thought and thought about this, because I really do get everyone's counter arguments and I love the look of the horse that started the thread. But I can't get my head around breeding deliberately for hypermobility when that's a disease well known to cause huge problems in humans.
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oldie48 said:
But surely this is true for most if not all sports? I used to be a keen club tennis player but my level of skill was in a completely different place to those on the pro circuit or indeed some of our better players who had competed at county level in their young days. I still absolutely loved playing though and would play now if it weren't for my achilles tendon injury (sustained whilst playing tennis!). Just an after thought, I have a mass of sports related injuries whereas OH, who is not remotely sporty has never had a broken bone or any other injury, he is, however, as stiff as a board! Clearly neither of us was bred to do sport! I blame my parents.
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Not really I don't think. It's more like a sport where the elite level is competing with a completely different piece of kit, like F1. F1 is very elite, and only a very small amount of people ever compete in it, put there is no pretense that it isn't. F1 is treated as a sport in itself and is distinct from other motor sports, rather than trying to treat the other motor sports as being on the same continuum, just at a lower level, which is what dressage tries to do. And by having F1 functioning as, in effect, a separate sport, that frees others (e.g. formula 3) to have their own set of rules that better suits the goals of their particular sport, without taking anything away from the F1 'eliteness'.

In the same way I think you could have elite dressage, that is a showcase of the very best of a particular type of horse, ridden and trained by the very best riders and trainers for that type of horse. And then a separate type of dressage which is now free to alter rules and directives to encourage different (though very similar in founding principle) training aims that is catered more for a wide variety of horse types.
 
I'd be so wary of hearsay about top horses tbh, people love to tear down at successful horses and riders, and lots of people love a juicy story whether there's any truth in it or not ;) I can't say whether the same applies to your friend ycbm but unless I was able to verify a source i would take all sorts of stuff with a shovel full of salt.
 
DabDab said:
Not really I don't think. It's more like a sport where the elite level is competing with a completely different piece of kit, like F1. F1 is very elite, and only a very small amount of people ever compete in it, put there is no pretense that it isn't. F1 is treated as a sport in itself and is distinct from other motor sports, rather than trying to treat the other motor sports as being on the same continuum, just at a lower level, which is what dressage tries to do. And by having F1 functioning as, in effect, a separate sport, that frees others (e.g. formula 3) to have their own set of rules that better suits the goals of their particular sport, without taking anything away from the F1 'eliteness'.

In the same way I think you could have elite dressage, that is a showcase of the very best of a particular type of horse, ridden and trained by the very best riders and trainers for that type of horse. And then a separate type of dressage which is now free to alter rules and directives to encourage different (though very similar in founding principle) training aims that is catered more for a wide variety of horse types.
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Great analogy DD.
 
DabDab said:
Not really I don't think. It's more like a sport where the elite level is competing with a completely different piece of kit, like F1. F1 is very elite, and only a very small amount of people ever compete in it, put there is no pretense that it isn't. F1 is treated as a sport in itself and is distinct from other motor sports, rather than trying to treat the other motor sports as being on the same continuum, just at a lower level, which is what dressage tries to do. And by having F1 functioning as, in effect, a separate sport, that frees others (e.g. formula 3) to have their own set of rules that better suits the goals of their particular sport, without taking anything away from the F1 'eliteness'.

In the same way I think you could have elite dressage, that is a showcase of the very best of a particular type of horse, ridden and trained by the very best riders and trainers for that type of horse. And then a separate type of dressage which is now free to alter rules and directives to encourage different (though very similar in founding principle) training aims that is catered more for a wide variety of horse types.
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I understand your point and to a degree I do agree with it (would be in my own personal competitive interests to break away from the elite ones).
I have 2 comments really: firstly I like that in BD the amateur hobby rider can find themselves up against CDJ on a MSJ powerhouse in the same class. it inspires me to do better. I can see the progression - albeit with a very dotted line between my performance and hers ;)

second, I think BD have attempted to recognise the - um, furry? ceiling that amateur riders come up against and that's what their weird and wonderful bronze/silver/gold streaming was attempting to address. Though, granted, without any changes in the sport rules or directives, but that's understandable because BD represent a national version of FEI dressage.

I don't know what appetite there would be for a different kind of dressage? would there be enough uptake to make it viable and meaningful competition? something worth paying for the infrastructure, staffing etc to manage it? kind of like how a minority campaign for bitless dressage but there's never really a groundswell to do more than have a few very small classes at local level or online, I would be a bit skeptical that it would take off (plus I would go back to my earlier question about how you effect change in judging guidelines)
 
ycbm said:
I have a friend who was training with Michael Eilberg at the time who told me that Farouche was on box rest for tendon strain when she went for her lessons, before she was even presented as a young horse. I have no idea if that was true, but can't think why my friend would lie about it.

I was stunned by her when I saw her win the National 5 year old title, but when I saw her warming up for an Inter I at Somerford at 9, I had to double check to make sure Michael was on the same horse. It took at least forty minutes for them to loosen her up, and for much of that time she looked to me like a stiff old donkey. I wasn't at all surprised to see her fail to reach GP.

There's a lot of comment about how Valegro and his training changed dressage for the better, but even he has a callous on his nose where the noseband sat, and he was retired at 14 with a lot of people believing he'd begun to find the work a struggle. Parzival went on to 20, but he is notable by his rarity.

I've thought and thought about this, because I really do get everyone's counter arguments and I love the look of the horse that started the thread. But I can't get my head around breeding deliberately for hypermobility when that's a disease well known to cause huge problems in humans.
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i was trying to say earlier how breeding evolves, it does`nt stay the same, and so breeding of dressage horses raises many questions to which i have no idea of the answers, only time will tell us if its going in the right or wrong direction for the horses welfare, but then its part one of the triple crown of breeding, training and competing to get the complete picture, any one of which could let the horse down, make it or break it,

i wonder if training will have to adapt to the horses to allow for such huge movement without destroying the horse and allowing them to go all the way
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I think all, well nearly all I have my own bugbear about vaulting and personally sont consider it an equestrian sport, equestrian disciplines are incomparable to any other Olympic sport because they involve another living, thinking being.

You could have the best tennis racquet or race car in the world and it's down to you to use it correctly to win but training/riding/competing the "best" horse in the world is a guarantee of nothing because they all have their own opinions about things and bad days.

Obviously that's where training comes in and that's off the back of breeding a fit for purpose horse with hopefully a trainable attitude. But the best training in the world won't make a horse 100% consistent like a configured set of golf clubs.

That's why I think, whilst some analogies work, you cant really compare horse sports to individual sports or sports with equipment that doesnt have it's own brain
 
Can anyone point me to a creditable piece on hypermobility in horses, please. Is it a disease, is it inherited, how do you test for it etc? I've looked on the internet and can't find anything much about it, more about it in people but little or nothing about the equine version and I'd like to know what is being described as it seems to be more than just having big movement.
 
oldie48 said:
Can anyone point me to a creditable piece on hypermobility in horses, please. Is it a disease, is it inherited, how do you test for it etc? I've looked on the internet and can't find anything much about it, more about it in people but little or nothing about the equine version and I'd like to know what is being described as it seems to be more than just having big movement.
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It's a connective tissue disorder that is genetically heritable https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24443030/
 
oldie48 said:
Thanks, will have a read. Always looking to increase my knowledge and tbh wasn't aware of it. How would you know by looking at a horse eg the one in the video that it had hypermobility disease?
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The normal sign quoted is the fetlock touching or almost touching the floor when you wouldn't normally expect to see it go that far given what the horse is doing. The horse in the video does look as if his fetlocks touch or almost touch the floor in trot.
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ycbm said:
I don't think that's it, SS. ESPA can result in stretched ligaments but it can also result in hardened ones. I think hypermobility, as in 'born with long, lax tendons' is a different thing.
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I believe it is in the same family of connective tissue disorders, and as they found in the paper it is a systematic problem and not just the fetlock issue etc. The same as humans where connective disorders cover a wide range of problems.
 
I got this shot without having to try hard, it's normal for him. I do like him! I'm not trying to pick holes in him, just explain why people earlier suggested there was some hypermobility there. Some level of it may simply be a requirement for dressage at top level these days. I hope we will see more research into the soundness and longevity of horses with it.


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Elf On A Shelf said:
I used to ride a horse that cost 4.5 million as a yearling. What he cost on that day courtesy of his bloodlines meant nothing compared to what he was worth as a 5yo national hunt gelding - think more 4.5k ?
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And therein lies the rub.
At some stage someone will want a return on their investment. Another rider will take far more out of him and not be nearly so sympathetic when he offers a bit of resistance.
As for cobs; they are lovely creatures but have stubby pasterns which make them less comfortable to ride and therefore affect the ride. A long backed Welsh cob might be more comfortable and they are capable of some impressive moves. Unfortunately they reserve these moves for when you're trying to catch them, afterwards not so much.
I don't get the sporting comparison to inanimate objects. Competitive horsemanship is always a 'doubles' event. I bet Lewis Hamilton never went back to the pits swearing about the bloody flower pots!
 
paddi22 said:
they had a dressage demo here with people riding various levels and Judy Reynolds commenting on them. there was an Irish draught at one of the top levels (can't remember exactly which level) doing foot perfect work with a lovely attitude. the comments from the experts were basically 'happy horse lovely movements, but will get stuck at a level of mark because it doesn't have the wow factor that pushes an 8 to a 9. I thought that was really unfair at the time but could see what they meant when the next springy elastic warmblood bounced in all with flashy movements. the draught was obedient and working hard but you could kind of see the effort going in. the next horse that came in literally bounced in like it was made of springs.
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It isn't great advice though because unless a rider wants to be internationally competitive the draught will do the job.
 
Buster2020 said:
A few years ago when I was teenager I used to put videos on YouTube. Some of the comments I got were extremely rude. I ended up deleting the whole YouTube channel. But YouTube has gotten worse it really turned into a witch hunt now.
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Facebook has got awful too. I was on it years ago and it was fine. I use someone else's account now if i want to see something and the comments under posts are unreal. I believe the social media influencers get terrible comments too. Reading that stuff can't be good for anyone. I understand why you deleted your channel
 
ycbm said:
I got this shot without having to try hard, it's normal for him. I do like him! I'm not trying to pick holes in him, just explain why people earlier suggested there was some hypermobility there. Some level of it may simply be a requirement for dressage at top level these days. I hope we will see more research into the soundness and longevity of horses with it. /QUOTE]
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This is the late Bisto, hardly the most extravagant horse,just moved nicely and definitely not hypermobile, look at his pasterns/fetlocks and he was as sound as a pound but his pasterns were probably a bit on the long side but nothing major. I honestly don't think it's fair to suggest a horse has a disease from the basis of a video!21427220_10156715412985031_2632855882828794272_o (2).jpg
 
oldie48 said:
This is the late Bisto, hardly the most extravagant horse,just moved nicely and definitely not hypermobile, look at his pasterns/fetlocks and he was as sound as a pound but his pasterns were probably a bit on the long side but nothing major. I honestly don't think it's fair to suggest a horse has a disease from the basis of a video!View attachment 53670
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That's a lovely photo.
 
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mule said:
Facebook has got awful too. I was on it years ago and it was fine. I use someone else's account now if i want to see something and the comments under posts are unreal. I believe the social media influencers get terrible comments too. Reading that stuff can't be good for anyone. I understand why you deleted your channel
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I don't ever comment negatively on anyone's facebook posts. I may give constructive advice if asked for only! Social media is weird there is a page called Dressage Hub (?) That makes videos and posts about dressage riders and why they are terrible which I think is mean and unnecessary.
 
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