DeRosa Daily Equestrian Olympic News
Horsesdaily Veteran Olympic Reporter Diana DeRosa Brings Us Into Her World

Response To "Should Brilliance Be Marred By One Mistake"

Claudia Tarlov commented:
Yes, this is a common question, one that is obviously an ongoing debate, even among seasoned riders.

Sometimes it can be explained as mathematics along with excellence AND versatility. The rider who excels in the most “boxes” (score box on test sheet) will most likely win. In a test of many movements, a rider can toss a number and still win by being the best at the remaining movements with a higher average. In a shorter test (lower national levels) a mistake is more expensive, since fewer boxes remain to pull the average up.

Isabell’s remaining work was what dressage should look like. Many of the remaining riders either had small technical mistakes with larger training significance or tension, sometimes both. While I obviously root for the home team, no one had the balance of power and softness like Isabell’s ride. I am not sure however that I agree with Anky’s placing with mistakes. I think there is more power in Salinero than I like to see, as it looks tense, especially with Anky sitting behind vertical with her shoulders as she sometimes does (not sure of the GPS, as I just got home from a competition myself and have not had a chance to watch all the GPS rides). If Salinero, in addition had mistakes and a less-than-immobile halt, I don’t always understand her high placement. “Halo effect?” The halt issue there is a sign of tension-derived power in my opinion. There is a reason for the halt/immobility rule that Anky has trouble achieving.

So, how do you explain that to a newbie? Overall excellence and mathematics.

From Judy comes this response:
I think you posed a very interesting question!  Let me start right out with saying that I’m all for educating the ignorant instead of changing the rules of the sport.  Dressage, like gymnastics and figure skating, is beautiful to watch without having a clue about the judging.  Transparency should be about education, rather than ‘”fisher-pricing” the game. I mean, when you get right down to it, the scoring systems of many sports don’t make sense to the casual observer – look at tennis!

I’ll give you an example from another sport where judging, to be honest, can also be controversial – perhaps for the same reasons.  Last night I was watching the high bar event in men’s gymnastics.  Now, I know that falling off the bars is bad, and that you get points taken off for unbalanced dismounts, and so on, but I wouldn’t ever consider myself an expert or even particularly knowledgeable about the sport.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the commentator’s remarks about one competitor having lost his chance at a medal because of the mediocrity of his performance.  It looked spectacular to me!  He went on to explain about movements of lower difficulty, the lack of transitions and generally how those affected the score.  I still couldn’t see it, but I was happy that there was an explanation.  High diving, synchronized or not, goes too fast for me to see the details (thank God for the slow motion replay!), and fencing also moves so quickly that I can’t see most of the touches.  Point is, I trust that the rules of the game are fair, and that the judges know what they are doing.

I think that, given the necessarily subjective nature of judging in dressage, the fact that each movement is scored separately and individually is excellent.  Everyone has the potential for bad moments.  Excellent rides distinguish themselves from bad rides by the ability of the horse and rider to recover from a mistake and continue on – that should be rewarded!  Examples like those of Isabell Werth and Satchmo are great learning opportunities for the average competitor to see how it can be done – and that “putting it behind you” and “getting on with it” will be rewarded.

Quite frankly, I think that judging in hunter-jumper shows or breed specific shows is much more subjective and subject to “politics” because there aren’t individual scores and comments – and because the poor judge has to look at a bunch of horses all at the same time.  My hat is off to the ones that do it well!

I don’t think the test should be penalized overall because of one bad movement.  Yes, that piaffe should get a low score – although in both tests there were lots of good steps before all hell broke loose.  And certainly the submission score should suffer.  I think that displaying the individual movement scores during the test helps with that educational process, but they weren’t visible to those of us who were watching on line.

In my 30 years with horses, I’ve done some competing, some teaching, some judging at schooling shows and some scribing at big shows.  As a judge, you always want to find ways to encourage good efforts – it’s tough to put yourself under that kind of scrutiny.  And you’d be surprised at the number of people competing who weren’t aware that individual poor movements aren’t death sentences!  And the difference it makes in their outlook on test riding when they find out.  I wouldn’t change the rules for anything.

On a different subject: I can’t get over how great it has been to have NBC’s live streaming of the equestrian events (and all the others).  The whole world got to watch Satchmo have fits, the fabulous rides of Steffen and Ravel, the wonderful pink Russian horse, to name just a few!  And to have people like yourself and Brian O’Connor reporting in practically real time has been wonderful as well.  While I’m not a huge proponent of technology, this has been amazing!