RachelFerd
Well-Known Member
Putting this as a separate thread to the one on Blenheim horse deaths, because I think this is an interesting tangent to the discussion and maybe merits its own discussion...
I was listening to a recent episode of the Equiratings Eventing Podcast (the overlander overview show #13 - the recipe of eventing) and Sam Watson had some really interesting and informed views on current safety and public perception issues that eventing is having.
What was interesting is that while the overall trend in the data is that horse falls are going down at al levels from the bottom right up to 4*, at 5* horse falls have been going up. Kentucky, Luhmuhlen and Burghley all had a 10%+ faller rate, which is too high - and the highest rate in many years. And although frangible tech has reduced falls significantly, more MiMs are being triggered at all levels, meaning that without the MiMs there would be more falls.
Sam's focus was on the type of horse coming into eventing - and that the imbalance in the way that the phases are scored leads to the dressage phase carrying more influence than the jumping phases. Hence the reliance on having horses with more and more movement and dressage breeding, and less focus on speed and endurance. We're getting more horses with slow power, and less quick speedy reactions.
Rather than amend the courses (which his view was that they are safer than ever in design and construction) his view was that changing the scoring could put more emphasis onto cross country riding, retain the weighting on SJ and reduce the influence of dressage - theoretically leading to a situation in which the phases have equal influence on the result and that the type of horse going into the sport would be safer, and continued emphasis would be placed on XC training rather than perfection of dressage work. He also raised the idea that maybe being closest to the optimum time shouldn't be the ideal any more - that faster riding should/could be rewarded. This sounded counter-intuitive on safety to me, until you think about the fact that long term it could change the horses coming in to the sport, and keep the emphasis on XC riding skill... plus, at places like Burghley where the time *is* tight, it has always been the case that fast riding is rewarded - so just make that consistent across all higher level events (this wouldn't apply to grassroots etc. ths is probably 4/5* only).
So two ideas based on this podcast, and a vague idea of how to operationalise them:
1. Create dressage 'pass marks' - so say that anyone scoring 25 or under starts on 0, anyone scoring 27 or under starts on 1, 29 or under is a 2, 31 or under is 3 etc. - lowering the impact of dressage judge variation at the top end (Michael Jung did a non-square halt that didn't stay put at Pratoni and still scored two 10s and an 8...) and reducing the difference among the scores, packing the field more tightly from the start.
2. Reward speed on XC - have a guide time based on current MPM speeds (an expected course speed) and a too fast speed which is 30 seconds above the guide time. The fastest 10% of rounds receive a 0 score, and then the rounds are given ranking penalties after that (so beyond 10%, 1 penalty for the next horse, 2 penalties for the one after... etc.) Jumping faults would continue to apply as they currently do. In the event of a tie, fastest horse on XC would always take priority.
You'd obviously need to tweak these a bit to make sure the phases had the right level of influence (using actual data rather than biased views to confirm that...) and it would also challenge the thinking that eventing scoring needs to be 'simpler' to attract an audience - whereas you'd kind of be making it more complicated, in order to shape the direction of the sport. That said, it would create a world in which the perfect eventing result would be to score a '0' - which is about as simple as you can make it?!
Any views??
I was listening to a recent episode of the Equiratings Eventing Podcast (the overlander overview show #13 - the recipe of eventing) and Sam Watson had some really interesting and informed views on current safety and public perception issues that eventing is having.
What was interesting is that while the overall trend in the data is that horse falls are going down at al levels from the bottom right up to 4*, at 5* horse falls have been going up. Kentucky, Luhmuhlen and Burghley all had a 10%+ faller rate, which is too high - and the highest rate in many years. And although frangible tech has reduced falls significantly, more MiMs are being triggered at all levels, meaning that without the MiMs there would be more falls.
Sam's focus was on the type of horse coming into eventing - and that the imbalance in the way that the phases are scored leads to the dressage phase carrying more influence than the jumping phases. Hence the reliance on having horses with more and more movement and dressage breeding, and less focus on speed and endurance. We're getting more horses with slow power, and less quick speedy reactions.
Rather than amend the courses (which his view was that they are safer than ever in design and construction) his view was that changing the scoring could put more emphasis onto cross country riding, retain the weighting on SJ and reduce the influence of dressage - theoretically leading to a situation in which the phases have equal influence on the result and that the type of horse going into the sport would be safer, and continued emphasis would be placed on XC training rather than perfection of dressage work. He also raised the idea that maybe being closest to the optimum time shouldn't be the ideal any more - that faster riding should/could be rewarded. This sounded counter-intuitive on safety to me, until you think about the fact that long term it could change the horses coming in to the sport, and keep the emphasis on XC riding skill... plus, at places like Burghley where the time *is* tight, it has always been the case that fast riding is rewarded - so just make that consistent across all higher level events (this wouldn't apply to grassroots etc. ths is probably 4/5* only).
So two ideas based on this podcast, and a vague idea of how to operationalise them:
1. Create dressage 'pass marks' - so say that anyone scoring 25 or under starts on 0, anyone scoring 27 or under starts on 1, 29 or under is a 2, 31 or under is 3 etc. - lowering the impact of dressage judge variation at the top end (Michael Jung did a non-square halt that didn't stay put at Pratoni and still scored two 10s and an 8...) and reducing the difference among the scores, packing the field more tightly from the start.
2. Reward speed on XC - have a guide time based on current MPM speeds (an expected course speed) and a too fast speed which is 30 seconds above the guide time. The fastest 10% of rounds receive a 0 score, and then the rounds are given ranking penalties after that (so beyond 10%, 1 penalty for the next horse, 2 penalties for the one after... etc.) Jumping faults would continue to apply as they currently do. In the event of a tie, fastest horse on XC would always take priority.
You'd obviously need to tweak these a bit to make sure the phases had the right level of influence (using actual data rather than biased views to confirm that...) and it would also challenge the thinking that eventing scoring needs to be 'simpler' to attract an audience - whereas you'd kind of be making it more complicated, in order to shape the direction of the sport. That said, it would create a world in which the perfect eventing result would be to score a '0' - which is about as simple as you can make it?!
Any views??
