Date: 16/17th September2017
Running order of Divisions: Saturday CIC2*, CIC3* Sunday CIC1*
Arena: Oval All-Weather
Starters/Clear Rounds:
CIC1* ‘A’ – 48/ 7 plus 4 with time faults (23%)
CIC1* ‘B’ – 17/ 8 (47%)
CIC2* ‘A’ - 50/12 plus 5 with time faults (34%)
CIC2* ‘B’ – 55/15 plus 2 with time faults (31%)
CIC3* – 44/11 plus 3 with time faults (32%)
This arena being oval presents a great challenge to any Course Designer when laying out their courses as there is no straight sides to work off. It is very important in these cases to take your time and just lay out all the top poles on the ground before you start to build any fence. This way you can adjust their positions until you are finally happy with how the course sits in the arena. This is also important if you are changing lines to make sure these also work for you later in the day, so you are not moving fences unnecessarily.
There was some moving and reversing of fences between the Two Star and Three Star courses but with a good ring crew, and I am assuming some watering and dragging between Divisions, this should have been accomplished without any major hold up of the timetable. These changes did allow for the technicality of the Three Star to be increased, which would have been very important for this Event with the large number of entries.
The show jumping of the One Star was held on the second day so this did allow for some changes including moving the liverpool to a new position.
The triple combination, in the One Star, had two verticals at ‘b’ and ‘c’ as well as the double combination being constructed of two verticals. However, one was of two strides and the other one stride, so this did give a variation.
The times were extended for all the Divisions and it was interesting to read on the Evaluation Sheet that there were two measurements for the Three Star. The longer distance proving to be the right one in the end. The speed for this Division is 375 metres/minute, compared to 350 m/m for the other Divisions. With a number of roll backs in the Three Star it is not always easy to maintain the required speed if measured too tightly. I have also found that with courses measured below 500 metres (the length of the Three Star is posted as 455m) it is also difficult to make the 375m speed if again it is measured too tight.
Richard Jeffery
USEF Eventing Show Jumping Course Advisor