This message is from: "Dagrun Aarsten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Interesting reading about the judge prejudice.
Just a little comment from me, regarding dressage judging. Don't know how it works here, based on my Norwegian experience. I don't expect a perfectly executed dressage movement by a fjord to get the same marks as those performed by a warmblood, since a part of the mark even for the individual movement reflects the quality of the gait. A friend of mine in Norway, who is also a novice dressage judge, told me that if a fjord does a movement perfectly, the best mark it can get is usually 6. The warmbloods pull up the marks just by their extravagant gaits, and can get a higher mark even when not perfect. So I've just come to accept this as the way dressage is jugded, and not prejudice. It will be completely fair only when horses of the same breed compete against each other. BUT this is especially true at the higher levels, at levels below intermediate (in Norway), the gaits are not so strongly judged and a precicely ridden test with a well-trained fjord can win you the class. A fjord can sometimes "recover" some score on movements like halt and backing up, or turn on the haunches, that are technique more than gait. They will usually score lower on the extensions... I have seen some nasty examples of judge prejudice in Norway, especially towards fjords that are traditionally "working horses" and are often looked down upon by riders having more typical dressage/jumping horses. But hopefully it's getting better. I guess the point I wanted to make was that marking fjords lower for not having the warmblood gaits is not necessarily prejudice. I've just been trained to accept that that's the way it is. If performance was jugded up to the individual horse's maximum ability, then I guess all Grand Prix riders would have fjords :-) So dependable, stable and eager to learn! My dressage judge friend mentioned above competed his fjord up to Prix St. George as a junior (probably the only fjord in Norway who's done that), then had to move on to the warmbloods to be competitive. He sold his fjord two years ago, now I see it's for sale again. Anybody interested? (http://www.hest.no/marked/les?id=16026). 11 year old gelding, extensive dressage training, NOK 18 000. WIth an exchange rate of 8, that comes out something like USD 2250. Wow. Dagrun, San Jose, Ca
