Belgian O-judge Mariette Withages-Dieltjens sent a letter to the editor in reaction to Eurodressage's editorial Mechelen Music Massacre, in which editor-in-chief Astrid Appels exposed the freestyle judging format in need of updating as it judging of the freestyle has over the years been leading to many disputable rankings with no unison in the artistic scores amongst the judges.
Withages wrote the following letter:
Dear Astrid,
I have been reading your article about the "Mechelen Music Massacre" with great interest. Even if I am very much aware of your enthusiasm, I would like to make some comments. Over the years you “pointed out major discrepancies and cases of injustice” in your very popular and to the point “Eurodressage”.
Nobody will deny that discrepancies happen, but this is not only in Dressage! It seems to be inherent to all judging sports ( e.g. ice-skating). But allow me, not to agree with the term “injustice”. I have all the reasons in the world and a long enough experience to still believe in the “honesty” of my colleagues.
During the press conference, I was asked about the “differences”. I told the press that the judges team had actually done a good job. Yes, I do agree again with you, that one judge got over enthusiastic with Adelinde’s performance and another one really liked Helen’s. But what is wrong with that? Their enthusiasm and the difference in percentage did not even change the placing!! They just expressed themselves a bit “louder” than the other judges on the team.
As a committee, a task force, an association, a media person or a musical technician, you can come up with lots of ideas to minimalise the differences, inventing new criteria, new systems and new rules, but differences will still happen.
Yes, I do agree again, that it was a shame and unfortunate that the music stopped at the beginning of the Freestyle test of the two German riders. This was due to a technical problem. The sound engineers were able to fix it quickly. Thanks Goodness! But was it really an inexcusable mistake and was this really a testimony of low organization skills? I do not think so. It even happened at the Olympics in Sydney, when Ulla Salzgeber and Rusty walked down the diagonal (I know and I know the reason why, because I was there as FEI TD). Ever heard about Murphy’s Law? So sh…t can always happen, everywhere… and not only in Mechelen.
About the expiry date on a Kür: As you know, having a Kür choreographed and composed by professionals is a very costly thing, even for the top riders. Divide this sometimes astronomical amount of money by the times the rider/horse combination performs in the Free style and you will be surprised about the cost of this 5 to 6 minutes presentation. I honestly do not see the need to have a rule for an expiry date, specially, when it is an harmonious and well done free style. Just compare it with the music of Mozart or Frank Sinatra. Do we want this music to be abolished because it is older then 3 years? Certainly not, we still enjoy it.
Boring, inappropriate or inadequate music do not serve our purposes and should be changed as soon as possible.
Thank you for publishing my remarks.
Kind regards,
Mariette Withages- Dieltjens
(Editor's Note: I replied to Mrs Withages with the following message: "Maybe I did not express myself clearly enough in my article but it was my intention to point out the erroneous system behind scoring the freestyle and not questioning the expertise of the judges. If you see that the same group of judges functions well with acceptable scoring differences in the Grand Prix, but in the freestyle they are 13% apart, than the format of the freestyle is wrong and not their knowledge.
I strongly believe that several improvements can be made to the format. I'm not in favour of "abolishing" an old freestyle, but I do think the rider should get less points for the degree of difficulty if they keep using the same music/floorplan for years. For instance, Anky van Grunsven rode her beautiful Esprit Chanson freestyle for 6 years (2003 - 2009). The floorplan is dead simple but by 2009 her horse was a double Olympic champion still doing the same baby kur. This shouldn't happen?!
Two names come to my mind when I think of 'unjustified' winners in a Kur Championship. To take very recent examples: the 2012 World Cup Finals should have been won by Helen Langehanenberg and more strikingly Steffen Peters should have won the Aachen Kur in 2011.
FEI score analyst David Stickland has expanded my point in Mechelen Music Massacre by explaining from a mathematical viewpoint why the freestyle format is flawed. Read Stickland's article here.
On an organizatorial level the technical mistakes in Mechelen with the CD stopping not during one, but two (!!) rides, can be simply prevented. Instead of playing a CD from a laptop which can get stuck, professional sound engineers use a decent computer system and play the converted audio file from the harddrive (not a CD). In addition one can still have a second CD playing synchronously as a back-up system.)
Photo © Astrid Appels
