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Photos:
Images from the official video of the
2002 Games in Jerez:
Farbenfroh's passage,
with
scores beside him.
Invasor's pirouette, also
with scores displayed. Jerez
marked one of the first widely
available transparent videos.
Dressage un Ltd. photos
Nadine Capellmann on Farbenfroh
shown scoring 8s and 9s for the
canter half-pass.
Ulla Salzgeber on Rusty (shown at
Jerez scoring two 10s for one-tempis)
might have placed differently at the
2000 Olympic Games had the three-
rider rule been in effect.
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Continued
from page 2
... Until transparent video. Videos of top dressage
competitions have become a very popular product in the last few
years. It was natural for production companies to record the
scores along with the movements. Dressage un Ltd. began
including the marks by movement in 2002, with the World Equestrian
Games, Jerez, and CHIO Aachen. The 2003 European Championships
in Hickstead, England, produced a DVD which showed the marks by
movement. Suddenly it was possible for people to replay and to
compare the movements and scores of different horses in detail.
One or two influential figures in the dressage world seem
uncomfortable with transparent videos. Technology, however,
never moves backwards, and the cat is out of the bag. It's most
likely not a question of if transparent dressage videos will
become widely available, but when. But why would anyone
disapprove of transparent video?
The
Official Point of View
The vast majority of judges work hard to score fairly and
accurately. Judges and riders understand the artistic nature of
the discipline and aren't shocked to see one judge give a half-pass a
score of 6, while a different judge, witnessing the movement from a
different perspective, gives it a 7. Anyone who accepts the
inherently subjective nature of the scoring should be comfortable with
a certain amount of debate. Overall, judges' scores stand up
well to examination.
But look at it from a judge's point of view. The judge is
sitting quietly in the shade at a horse show, trying to grab a quick
lunch and a moment of solitude. He overhears a loudmouth critic,
whose daughter is an expert after four riding lessons, attack the
scoring at last month's CDI, fueled by her enthusiastic (if
uninformed) viewing of a transparent video. (Don't think that
this is an exaggeration. This writer once witnessed the mother
of a novice rider instructing Todd Minikus, as he attempted to teach a
clinic, how he should have ridden the final fence at a recent Grand
Prix.) The judge in our imaginary scenario is thinking that if
beginner riders and their parents must view transparent videos, they
should do so with the guidance of an instructor.
Transparent video could also make it harder for sour-grapes
complainers and self- appointed kibitzers to criticize the
judges. The same videotape which captures a movement's scores is
also recording the movement itself. If the horse pops out his
left shoulder, loses activity behind, or gets, hollow, the flow is
captured in living color on the video. Everyone can see when a
horse explodes instead of piaffing . . . but the videotape and its
scores will help viewers to comprehend more subtle mistakes as well.
continued on page
4
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