2005 Global Dressage Forum

Sitting on the edge of the seat with high expectations, we were hoping to get a flaming opening of the 2005 Global Dressage Forum that immediately touched upon the sore spots in our sport: rollkur and the judging system.

Instead, in his opening speech IDTC president David Hunt commanded the audience to virtually shut up about any rollkur related issues, forget the past and move forwards. "Our goal here is to move the sport forwards in relaxing circumstance," Hunt stated, "We don't support a certain training system. We go for quality of the paces and the welfare of the horse. We look for a system which produces the best result." This statement seemed to promise the critical debate that would compare rollkur versus classical training, but on the contrary, Hunt added, "we have to swipe away the past. Let's move on and see what is being produced in the ring." Quite trite, don't you think?

FEI Dressage Committee Chairwoman Mariette Withages concurred with Hunt saying that through the Dressur Pervers discussion "we are going backwards and now have to start all over again. Let's go back to the Happy Athlete." At the 2004 Global Dressage Forum, the 'Happy Athlete' was the major theme and its echoes are still reverberating at this year's forum, which is a positive development. Classically schooled trainers and riders like Georg and Monica Theodorescu and Klaus Balkenhol and Stefan Wolff showcased a happy athlete, but before Theodorescu was asked to speak, the audience had to survive a monotonously long introduction to the judges' handbook.

Dr. Volker Moritz was asked to talk about the progression of this handbook, which is currently in its fifteenth draft version and which will not be ready before next year. Judges Linda Zang, Mariette Withages, Angelika Fromming, Stephan Clarke, Volker Moritz, Katrina Wust, Beatriz Burchler, Woyczeck Markowski and Dieter Schule contributed to the handbook with the criteria of the training scale as its central theme. Moritz stressed that the regularity of the gaits has to be the highest priority for judges and looseness ("durchlassigkeit") should be the overall aim of the training scale. He reviewed the marks from 0 to 10 for each movement.

In general, the handbook presents a rigid, structured definition of what each mark represents and in what way a movement has to be performed to earn such a mark. However, there are still several comments to be made about it.

For instance, if a horse performs an extended trot for a 10, but does two steps of canter, does the score have to drop all the way to a 2 or 3 as the judges' handbook defines, or will it go to a 4 or 5 as one expects currently to get in the judging system?

Moritz renamed the judges' handbook "Dressage Handbook" and told the audience that is would be "a tool for teaching young, less experienced judges. It will lead to better judging. However, it can not replace the schooling of the eye and the judge needs to develop a clear picture in his head" of what quality of movement each mark represents.

Text copyrighted Astrid Appels/Eurodressage.com, Images copyrighted Dirk Caremans -
No Reproduction allowed without explicit permission

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