Ta-Ran-Ta-Rah

I realised the other day where that particular phrase came from. It's the one I want to use every time I take THE MONSTER out for a hoon.

Such an opportunity came today.

We had arranged for THE FELLA and THE MONSTER to go to a cross country course and gallops. Wagon problems meant that alternative arrangements were needed, and THE MONSTER and I (grammer), hitched a lift to the venue.

Wayhey!

What a sweetie she was. I am spoiled really. I barely ride her, but I can pull her out of the field and ride her bareback for 45 minutes, or slap her on a wagon and take her to a strange venue and she'll not be fazed.

She tackled everything. Her first hedge? Second go. Ditch, no problem. Stone Wall, just watch those topstones. Watersplash - well, these are never a problem. But this time we had a log to get over first. It was never in doubt. It wasn't just her first Trakhener either, it was mine! We liked it so much we did it twice.






I confess to being very jealous of those people who can make it round any BE affiliated course, never mind *** and ****.

But I suppose some people must be jealous of the way MONSTER and I can go and throw ourselves over Intro level fences (after a bit of warm up), without ever going out and practising.

Yar-boo-sucks I sa.

Hard Ground Cheese

I gave up a place at the UK National Championships of my sport this weekend to support THE RIDER.

Up at silly o'clock to travel four hours across country. Except that it only took 2 and a half hours. Our estimate was based on the time taken by a Citoen Xsara driver, who must end up with longer queues behind him than even we did!

Parking was atrocious - lack of space meant there was no room ti tie up and the organisers expected us to do everything on the wagon. Excuse me, but, STUDS!

RIDER made a tough decision after the dressage. It was obvious that THE FELLA was unhappy. All my photos show a hollow, tense horse, struggling to keep his grip on the rock hard ground. So hard in fact that it broke one of his studs.

RIDER ummed and ahhed out continuing. Finally she askedd me what I would do. Well, if it was THE MONSTER I'd have pulled here out. So THE RIDER did the same. I respect her for that. When you've paid a lot of money to compete, even if the venue doesn't come up to the usual standards you expect of an affiliatedd BE event you are tempted to continue. Deciding to quit for the sake of your horse (as many top riders did at Windsor the week before), is not easy, but is the right choice. Especially if you don't have a string to compete.

Obviously RIDER is disappointed, but at THE FELLAS age she made the right decision.

Lowest Score Wins

There are talks afoot of changing eventing scoring to 'make it easier to understand'.

One of the propsed changes is to have highest score win. If you're involved with horses it doesn't take long to understand the scoring. No need to change on our behalf then.

So on who's behalf is this change? One reason I've heard is that it will make it easier to understand for the non-riding public.

Excuse me? What a load of rubbish.

Plenty of sports are won on lowest score. Golf for instance. A sport I suspect many the people proposing this change are playing than managing the sport if this sort of change is the type of rubbish they are even considering entertaining.

We make it even easier for non-horsey viewers by referring to the score in terms of penalties and faults. Any idiot can see that to win you must have lowest faults. Are the people in favour of this change accusing the viewers of being idiots. I see the problem in attracting their attention here. They're treating you with the contempt you deserve for looking down on them.

Besides, any school child can tell you that adding up is easier than taking away. As it is we only have to do one subtraction - taking away the score of the Come Dancing, sorry dressage, phase away from 100.

Then it's a simple case of easy to understand adding on penalties. Simple.

And for the public watching on TV it's even simpler. The dressage phase doesn't get the coverage of the proper, exciting sections. The dressage scores are presented to the viewing public fait accompli when coverage starts. They neither know nor care that the scores have been worked out one way, highest best, then subtracted from 100.

Please let's not have the poncey subjective stage extending it's influence not just over the final result (FEI multiplier - pah!), but on the way the sport is scored overall.