The Dutch Equestrian Federation has been experimenting with new committee panels to review the quality of the Dutch dressage judges in training.
Two journalists, Jacob Melissen and Claartje van Andel, have been put on the panel to assess the capacities of current Dutch judges who want to move on to judging at Grand Prix level.
On 2 April 2009, the KNHS invited 13 judges for a screening at the federation's equestrian centre in Ermelo, The Netherlands. They were reviewed on their qualities in order to make sure that they can pursue their training to become Grand Prix judges. The KNHS believes that judging the technicality of dressage movements is no longer sufficient to be a good judge.
Judges in dressage are often asked to explain their views to the media, so the KNHS decided to devote extra attention to the communicative skills of the candidates. The future Grand Prix judges were presented with two different tests on a video screen and were asked to mark and comment each movement. After the test, two panels with international judges and two journalists examined the candidate-judges.
The KNHS set up two teams of examiners. Team one included O-judge Jan Peeters, journalist Claartje van Andel and KNHS chief secretary Andries van den Berg. Team two included O-judge Wim Ernes, journalist and KNHS press officer Jacob Melissen and dressage innovator Joep Bartels.
The bar was high and several candidates did not pass as they were too insecure. The candidates also had to fill out a "meta-profile" test, which will be analysed to check whether the candidates have the right profile to become a Grand Prix judge.
"We've denied potentially good candidates to protect them from not making the transition to Grand Prix too early," Wim Ernes said in a KNHS press release. "It's very frustrating to see that you can't handle the pressure that is involved with judging at Grand Prix level. You run the risk that you will be loosing people, who could function perfectly well if you had given them the time to ripen."
"It was obvious that there was a huge motivation amongst these candidate Grand Prix judges, just like with the small tour judges. Of course it hurts when you have to reject someone. On the other hand, it is striking that there was hardly any discussion in the panels. Good meant good and the other two panellists always agreed when someone was not good enough ," Jacob Melissen said in his own press release.
Photo copyrighted: Koenraad Cappon
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