Judging walk pirouettes

Those dreaded walk pirouettes are still disliked by riders, but don’t worry, I think they’re also dreaded by judges. Judges seem to have varied ideas on what to look for in this reasonably easy exercise, and how to mark them, consequently confusing riders as how to ride them.

Looking at scores that are now available to all and sundry post competitions, it is often interesting to see where the discrepancy in marks lay, and on researching this, one of the movements that has the biggest discrepancies is definitely the walk pirouettes.

It is often that this movement that is not well enough understood, and hence marked either too high or too low, and it is so often the reason for the difference in the percentages, and hence the placings amongst the judges on the same test. There are always two walk pirouettes, and sometimes a coefficient attached to them, and so up to 40 marks can be available in two pirouettes. And, of course, the quality of the walk during the movement comes into the mark for the collected walk that is also a coefficient mark. Therefore, the overall marks for the walk during the pirouettes can be up to 60 marks, which is up to 15% of the total test!

It’s always interesting to look at pulling every movement apart detail by detail and then putting it all back together. It’s like making a jigsaw puzzle complete at the end of putting all the pieces together – you have a beautiful perfect picture of the walk pirouette. If one tiny piece of the puzzle is missing, it doesn’t mean that the overall impression can’t still be good. It’s just missing one tiny bit and, as a consequence, some people become bogged down with not being able to see the overall impression, and the overall good feeling of a pirouette, but instead get hung up on one minor part...

Read the full article FREE in the April 2024 issue of Equestrian Life magazine here.