DefinitelyDressage.com

http://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2017/0 ... d-judging/

I liked this.

oh i just read it, i found the judge, Leif to be more erudite than the author, whose name i could not find, who often wrote as if it were Leif's opinion, when he or she were expressing their own pov.

Oh very interesting article! It was a little hard to follow at times as to who was saying what, but I think interviewer (who seemed to have a lot of opinions) was in subtle italics and once I figured that out it was much easier to follow.

In general, I thought Lief made really good points. The sort of black and white style of the interviewer made for an interesting debate, but also he seems to lack the overarching perspective that I think Lief has. AND I would strongly disagree that all classical trainers would get together and say the same things. There are many schools of classical thought with often marked differences in their training methodology. Perhaps they would mostly agree on the end product, but often not the exact same way of getting there.

The quotes I'm referencing below:

“Of course one of the excuses is that in the old days there were maybe only ten judges judging the big shows and they could all meet and talk. Now it’s thirty, and meeting together is difficult. The bigger the sport gets, the more difficult it is, like any organization, but that means we need to have even more emphasis on having a clear view.”

“I can come down here to Australia, and give a clinic and you see what I do, and you like it, or not. The next time someone else comes down and says the opposite – and that can be approved in that person’s environment.”

I don’t believe that for one second Leif, the only trainers that are different and new are bad trainers, all the good trainers – they might use different words – but all the good trainers train exactly the same way. If that had been Jean Bemelmans or Hubertus Schmidt, sitting in the school this morning instead of you, they would have been saying exactly the same things…

“But you are now mentioning the Germans, if it was Sjef Janssen sitting there, or Edward Gal, or Hans-Peter Mindenhoud, they would not say the same things.”

But I don’t think they are good trainers or riders…

“That’s your definition.”

This was on my facebook page today...

http://www.eurodressage.com/equestrian/ ... f-tornblad