Dinja van Liere on Streaming the Warm-Up: "We are put under a magnifying glass which is undermining the entire sport"

Opinions

Horses.nl interviewed Dinja van Liere at the World Cup qualifier in 's Hertogenbosch seeking her opinion of streaming not only the dressage classes but also the warm up.

At the Gothenburg Horse Show three cameras were installed in the warm-up and the footage was streamed to provide the equestrian world more transparency and to make secret filming unnecessary.

Equal Rules

Even though Dinja did not see the Gothenburg footage but was willing to share her opinion on streaming the warm-up.

"if it is done for dressage, it should also be done for jumping," she stated. "There are still many differences in the rules between jumping and dressage, for example in terms of tach, and I find that strange. After all, it is about the welfare of the horse and it does not matter to me whether it is a dressage or a jumping horse.”

Nitpicking

When the crowds start filming warm-up clips, they often get shared on social media without context.

“Transparency is very good, but it is a tricky thing," she said. "I think it's fine that the warm-up is not behind closed doors, because wrong things shouldn't happen. We certainly have to go after the exceptions that are not doing things right. On the other hand, one can always nitpick about something. People will have criticism, clips that lack content are being spread. We are put under a magnifying glass which is undermining the entire sport."

Keyboard Critics

Van Liere, who won double bronze at the 2022 World Championships in Herning with Hermes (he's scheduled to make his CDI come back in two weeks in Aachen) is afraid that the sport might disappear if keyboard critics continue to pick everything apart.

“Today we live in a world where it doesn't matter how well you do because it's never good enough," she stated pessimistically. "Suppose the horse gets scared and you try to keep him with you, causing him to become too short in the neck, then by cutting a piece of film they can say that you rode too short and deep. But if they were to look at it with their own eyes in the warm-up, they would see that it was a moment of spooking and for the rest the horse was going fine. They have to see in real life what happens at a competition. The fun and excitement of the sport will disappear if everyone just sits at home behind their computer, watching and criticizing. At a certain point, no one goes to a competition anymore.”

More opinions on the topic in De Paardenkrant.