Show Jumping course plans start with ideas. These ideas are prompted by the type of class you are designing for. A few weeks ago, I designed a couple of classes for the EAM’s Digitalization Competition 02/2020. The main class was an accumulator. The parameters set were therefore related to FEI Article 269, the size of the arena, and also EAM’s rule that no fillers be used, only poles.
I tried to include as much detail as I could, so that the competition could be as fair as possible, the courses as similar as possible, between the different venues.
Having done as much as I could, I went to the Selangor Turf Club Equestrian Centre to watch the course being jumped. It is always interesting to see how your ideas are translated when it is put the test of competitive riding.
In accumulators, each fence is valued by its number. Therefore, the course should get progressively harder, and the joker, which is a +- value that is double of the last fence, should be the most difficult fence of the class. A course designer does that by raising heights, lengthening widths of oxers, and using distances that test the horses and rider’s abilities. Visually, we can also change the look of fences by how we position the poles.
Or in the case of Saturday’s joker, it was a single pole, just above the height of the class. In the 1.30 m class, it was to be a single white pole at 1.35 m. Yes, it is 5 cm above the class height, but remember, the joker is an option, and there was a 1.30 m oxer that the riders could opt for, so there no compulsion to jump the 1.35 m height, unless the riders wanted to.
The course rode well. I was pleased with it. I’m also pleased that many venues commented that details in the course plan, with the grid dropped over it and helpful distances from the arena fence and relative positions to other fences helped the course builders position the fences correctly.
This is the minimum of what we need to give venues if we are to have more of these digitalized competitions.
That is not to say that I am a fan of these online competitions. I watched the jumping at STCEC, and the next day I watched KL Academy of Polo riders do their dressage tests at RSPC.
The competitors were judged online, the judges sitting in EAM’s office. I have no issue with the judging done remotely – I understand this is the best we can do to have a national competition in this pandemic challenged time.
But with no spectators, there is no atmosphere. I imagine it must be hard to get the adrenaline going if you are the only horse and rider in the whole equestrian centre. I saw that on a few occasions over the weekend – just one rider in the warm-up ring, later going on course with only the bell and cameras rolling.
Equestrian sports are individual sports where we compete alone in the arena, but complete isolation makes it harder for the riders.
There is no visual comparison of the riders who started before you – a rider can’t see how the course is riding. They can’t see if a particular fence is causing a lot of knockdowns or refusals. Riders cannot see how others tackle a particular distance. I had designed the related distance to the joker to be an option of 5 or 6 strides. While riders had to work out how they would ride it themselves, they had no visual reference of how others were doing it, which at a normal horse show, you could watch the first few riders jump the course.
It is the ultimate in performance objectives – you compete in abject isolation, satisfaction drawn by the round you ride. There are no competitive objectives to encourage comparison. While performance goals are what we strive for, competitive goals tell us how well we are doing compared to our peers. In this case, we get a national result, tabulated in an office, posted on a website, some hours later.
There are no running results, unless your Zoomers are nice enough to tell you, even if they can follow it. You had to wait to the end to find out if your score and time was good enough. You don’t have a ‘time-to-beat’ to spur you on.
Watching a rider suited and booted, competing alone, at 1:35 in the afternoon made me ponder the absurdity of riding in jackets. A tradition of the sport, a relic of colonial patronage that I think is outdated, especially in 34-degree heat.
To end it, there is no lap of honour, no prize-giving. No one to clap you on.
Yes, it is a horse show in as much as we can have horse shows. Do I like it? Not so much. I can’t wait for the return of the real thing.
Related Links:
A Zoom Show
Managing a Second Lockdown
RSPC Pony Club Polo Camp by KL Academy of Polo
D-Day Dressage Extravaganza
Federation of International Polo
KL Academy of Polo
