Steffen Peters riding Ravel
Photo © Kit Houghton/FEI
 

By Stephen Clarke FEI Judge General President IDOC

I can imagine how hard it is for people who have never sat in a judge's box to understand just how difficult the job is. I can also understand how easy it is for the 'armchair critics' to point the finger and jump up and down the moment any of the judges have the slightest differences within their scoring.

I think it does need pointing out that our Judges are a hard working group of individuals with unquestionable integrity who are doing their utmost to give correct and logical marks to each and every movement the horses perform, but it's worth remembering that they are Human Beings, not Robots...

When one is having to judge up to fifty horses a day as was the case at the recent World Games, with each judge having to decide upon 1,850 marks per day (12,950 separate scores from seven judges) which if my mathematics are correct, amounts to a staggering 25,900 separate scores for just the two days of Grand Prix! it is inevitable that there will be the occasional variation of marks...

Our present system of judging has been expertly developed over many decades now, and in my opinion, even when there are the inevitable differences over individual points, with seven judges strategically placed around the arena, and the JSP acting as a 'safety net' should any one judge miss a counting mistake in the changes for example, the end 'team result' from the average of the seven judges is correct for the vast majority of the scores throughout the competition.

This having been said, I do also agree that we must all remain open minded and continue to search for practical ways to further develop and improve our judging of the sport.

Even though huge strides have been made, particularly over the last twenty years or so, to develop the judging through training, examination and transparency, improvements can always be made.

I had the honour to be part of the IDOC group that produced the FEI Hand Book for Judges several years ago which provides some detailed descriptions of each score for every movement from 10 down to zero (Yes we do train our officials to judge out of 'Ten' for those who have not been present at a judge's seminar) At the time this document was published we invited comments and suggestions for future revisions from all the Clubs, but so far no suggestions have been put forward, even though this document has been in existence since 2007.

I now read with interest that IDRC are coming up with a new 'code of points' idea/system for judging and will look forward to studying this new format when it is finally published.

However, I would like to point out that however many times we 're-invent the wheel' it will still be operated by the same willing group of volunteers that are officiating today, and will still be subject to the same inevitable differences of opinion. (Try asking seven top artists to paint an apple...I can promise that none of the apples will be identical...) Also it is worth thinking about the practical implications of re-training all of our FEI Judges around the Globe, but maybe in these days of modern technology anything is possible...

My biggest plea would be that any/all new systems that are put forward must be thoroughly tried and tested through 'pilot programme' situations before being put into action.

One suggestion would be to invite three of the members of IDRC who have developed this new system to 'shadow judge' at some major shows, alongside the FEI Judges using the existing system, and have a transparent publication of their scores available to the public and on the Internet as we do now?

The results could be very interesting.

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