GALWAY DOWNS INTERNATIONAL EVENT & HORSE TRIALS
Date: 5th November 2017
Running order of Divisions: CCI One Star, CCI Two Star, CCI Three Star
Arena: 310ft x 180ft Grass
Starters/Clear Rounds:
CCI 1 Star – 30/11 plus 2 with time faults (43%)
CCI 2 Star – 11/1 plus 1 with time faults (18%)
CCI 3 Star – 6/2 (33%)
A grass arena of 310ft by 180ft sounds a reasonable size but when you add four mature trees in a line, in the centre, it suddenly gets smaller. Add a VIP tent taking up 30ft of one end, four Cross-Country fences and a giant dinosaur skeleton this presents a challenge to any Course Designer. Fortunately the Course Designer was on site two days before the show jumping was due to be held, so he had a chance to ‘tweak’ his course he had laid out on paper to accommodate these items.
The plan was to remove one of these Cross-Country fences but in the end, after the show jumping course was built, all the Cross-Country fences and the dinosaur were removed. I think this was a good idea on the part of the Organisers as these Cross-Country fences could have been distracting to the horses, having jumped them the day before. In addition they could have also have restricted the spectators viewing.
This is one of the cases that even if you have designed at the Event before, you need to be on site early so that you can take your time walking around the arena and adjust your drawing accordingly, rather than trying to fit it in at the last minute and discover that you are running out of room.
What I like about these three tracks, is that all of them could be walked in the morning, as nothing moves between Divisions, but each gets more technical as you go up through the Divisions.
Reading the Evaluation sheet from the Course Designer, he states that his intention was to have two strides between the two oxers in the triple combination, but because one of them was going to obstruct the judges view of the course, this was reduced to one stride, but he did narrow the width of these oxers.
Two oxers on one stride, even for regular show jumping is very difficult and rarely seen, as if the riders do get the striding wrong going into it, or if the horses backs off over the first fence, it can get very ugly at the second oxer. With two strides horses can recover sufficiently if there is a problem. Even so a double of oxers on two strides is still a difficult combination and should only be used at the top level. Anyone who has the table of distances in combinations, that I produced, will note that I do not give a distance for two oxers on one stride, this was to discourage the use of this type of combination.
I think in this case it would have been better to have made the triple combination oxer/vertical/oxer. Alternatively, have only one oxer in the triple and then make one of the verticals, in the double, an oxer.
Richard Jeffery
USEF Eventing Show Jumping Course Advisor