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Re: [RC] Eventing's Classic Format - Truman PrevattKat,An observation. I went to the Budweiser $200,000 Grand Prix (Show Jumping) at Tampa stadium this year. The last time I went was 20 years ago. What a difference that 20 years makes. Twenty years ago there were about 25 horses. A third of them were TB. There was one QH! The rest were European Warmbloods. There were about 8 horses with clean first rounds that ended up in the jump-off. In the first round there is a time limit. If you are within that limit - time doesn't matter. If you are not then you get time faults. In the jump off there were (now this is from memory but it's long term memory so it's probably close) 3 TB, the QH and 4 warmbloods. On the jump off the horse with the fewest faults wins. If two horses have the same number of faults the fastest time wins. The rider on the QH was cutting the turns very sharp - almost a roll back on a couple of them and won on time! This year there were 27 horses and only 3 horses had clean rounds. Getting some of these warmbloods around the sharp turns in the course looked like getting a tour bus through the narrow twisting streets of an Northern England town. About 2/3's of the horses knocked off rails in the last 3 jumps which said to me they were tired since when we walked the course those jumps weren't any more difficult than any other jump. There were a lot of time faults - more than I remember 20 years ago. The one thing I remember was that while you always have to ride a horse to the jump, there seemed to be more margin for error with the TB's than the warmbloods. The other thing I remember was the TB's could be a little more excitable than the warmbloods which could cause the rider some problems. So I could understand why the Warmblood breeders would be pushing to "dumb down" eventing. Truman k s swigart wrote: The first being, European Warmbloods make poor eventers even if they don't have to do all four phases of the endurance portion of day two and only have to do cross country, because, as a general rule, they drive like trucks and don't have the agility to safely negotiate a cross country course with really big, solid fences, so even though they don't have to be able to do the 22+ miles, they still shouldn't be out there...but many of them are. -- "Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true." Bertrand Russell =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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