The German junior riders team dominated the team championship test and won team gold at the 2007 European Junior Riders Championships in Nussloch. Jill de Ridder won the class with 70.600 and would have placed much higher hadn't the Argentinian judge put on a pair of glasses.
De Ridder and Disco Boy scored in the low seventies with four judges, but the judge at H ranked her 29th (!!!!!!) with 65%. The Dutch team won silver, the Italian team bronze. Remarkable is the progress the Italian teams have made winning both junior and young riders' bronze this year!
The judging at the 2007 European Junior and Young Riders Championships received incredible amounts of criticism. It was astonishing how far off the judges were from each other. The dissatisfaction of riders, trainers, parents and the audience was openly expressed with frequent booing and whistling to scores of some riders. With a live score board it was easy to follow how judges, for instance, gave a 7 to a German home favourite combination for a complete faulty series of tempi changes. Zig Zag half passes with late flying changes received a score of 8. Italian riders were favoured by an Italian judge, who gave a total score of 71% to a test with 5 major mistakes in it. Eurodressage was flooded with emails from parents, trainers and riders asking us, "how does it come that the sport is still judged so politically. Trainers at the Championships said out load that the riders no longer believe in the credibility of the judges," a disgruntled parent told Eurodressage.
There were also complaints about the organisation of the show and the lack of perfection (German "grundlichkeit") was missing at the Nussloch Championships. A young rider parent wrote, "we've been to three European Championships so far but I and I presume more participants are surprised that the FEI allows to organise a European Championship at this place, in Germany. There was so much mud everywhere." Fortunately for the show the weather was good during the weekend with sky high temperatures, so the footing was able to improve a bit, but the complaints did not stop with the footing.
"Germany, The Netherlands and England got beautiful big stalls, while the rest of the riders had to squeeze themselves into long tents with narrow corridors where manure piles were growing higher and higher as the competition progressed. The arena was dragged 30 minutes before the competition and riders warming up had to ride round the tractor going through the ring. One day before the individual competition, 30 combinations had to ride in two warm up arena's in a time frame of 2 hours. The ring was totally overcrowded. Riders could not practise their tempi changes on the diagonal, nor extensions, or pirouettes. It was a constant watching out for collisions. The stewarding at the show was lamentable and only when a foreign judge made a comment about it, a bit check was carried out after each ride!"
The Danish team trainer, Jon D. Pedersen, reported on the website of the Danish Equestrian Federation that the judging at the European Championships was scandalous. "We [the Danish youth riders] have ridden really well, but never received the reward we should have got. Especially Anna Kasprzak scored 70.10% in the team championship test. Two judges had her as winner, one as third placed, one as fifth placed but the Italian judge placed her 13th!" Pedersen continued, "Also Louise Mølby and Annmette Mortensen were scored down. The Dutch were even surprised that they were better placed than the Danes. It's annoying, but we have to look forward and see if in the future Denmark can have a judge at the show, because that will certainly help."
All photos copyrighted Barbara Schnell
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