Dressage Task Force final report!!!!

[canyonoak]

http://www.fei.org/Disciplines/Dressage/News/Documents/FEI%20DTF%20report%2016%20October_final.pdf

This includes The Aachen trial and the conclusions drawn from it and recommendations

[mbm]

reads mostly like one long marketing strategy for making dressage more spectator/sponsor friendly (ie move the judge boxes so spectators can have a better view, etc).

and sorry, the whole riders as athlete thing makes me nauseous - the poor horse is relegated to just being a tool.

.

[canyonoak]

It is 50 pages long, very dense in ideas and areas covered, and you read the entire thing and drew conclusions in 15 minutes?

Wow.
Ive been looking at it for over half an hour, am only up to page 20 and have been rather impressed by at least 3-4 ideas so far.

[mbm]

i didn't read the appendix with the statistics. and i skimmed the beginning but read the "meat" ....

i didn't say there weren't any good ideas... i said it reads like a marketing strategy.

eta: correct that - it IS a marketing strategy. it is to sell dressage to the masses (with money) and not inherently to better the sport.

[ShotenStar]

I agree, there are some 'marketing' and 'window dressing' items in the report. But there are also some interesting process changes and factoids, like:

1-the DTF wants 'increased transparency' in the processes

2-"good judging starts with good judge education" -- FEI judges to be re-trained / re-examined regularly

3-item 6b, Resources to Be Used, sub-item #4 - consistency statistics. Not further defined in the paper ("David Stickland has developed a system to analyse the consistency in judging. The results of this objective comparison can never be used in isolation but it is a very good additional tool to assist the JSP in evaluating the judges’ performance."), so we don't know exactly what Stickland was doing. But it is very interesting that they are moving in this direction and this ties into the work the Nerd Herd is doing to look at consistency across US dressage (both by individual judge and by regions).

4-use of half marks "to improve precision"

5-the various judge positions (long and short sides) is of less importance than assumed. So much for that long-running argument the short and long side scores are a major issue / problem / expectation.

6-the words used to describe each mark to be reviewed

7-naming of classes to be reviewed (have no idea what this means ....)

My overall thought / intuition about this document is that it feels very politically correct ... the recommendations have likely been cooking in the background for awhile and this report gives them some nice clothes to wear for their public presentation. I'm not blown away by the statistical work, mainly because I feel they pre-selected a small, very uniform set of judges on which to test their variations. I would be more impressed with a large sample size from real-life shows .... but, at least they are thinking statistical thoughts and have opened the door for us to do more with our US score analysis project.

*star*

[Pony Fixer]

I thought the whole IDEA of a JSP was interesting--and great. I think if one judge is way off, especially for an objective thing (ie, missed that a tempi line did not have enough changes, etc.), that this should be corrected. Seems like there was a short term immediate use (ie, score could be thrown out immediately) and a long term use (repeat offenders need more re-education). It was pretty "global" and not specific--I think that's okay for a first attempt as long as it is followed up. Also, if any transparency or marketing results in a larger fan base, and even therefore more money, I see no immediate downside.

[Bronte]

Thank you Canyonoak, for posting this!

Very interesting read, with some excellent information.

I would like to see more emphasis on the Welfare of the Horse.

The Aachen judging trials were very revealing and although it can be argued that the panel was populated by judges 'on the same page', it still was a very valid experiment. Although the long and short side showed some serious differences, even within the side. I like the JSP, although have some reservations around appointees. I also like that the foreign O can officiate as JSP at CDI* thru ***

I liked the judge selection criteria. I liked the use of half marks. I loved the split of responsibilities for Freestyles.

I wonder who would ever want to be an FEI judge, small honorarium, very demanding job, much scrutiny and no recognition or thanks!

The competition structure makes sense, and I liked the catagorizing of events being on more than prize money!

This is a very positive step forward.

[eurodressage]

Hi,

One of the many things Stickland has developed is a statistical way to measure whether judges are judging patriotically. He'll be giving a presentation about this at the 2009 Global Dressage Forum and hold on to your horses, it's going to be very very impressive ;)

Astrid

[torontodressage]

Hi,

One of the many things Stickland has developed is a statistical way to measure whether judges are judging patriotically. He'll be giving a presentation about this at the 2009 Global Dressage Forum and hold on to your horses, it's going to be very very impressive ;)

Astrid

Why should somebody with a (good) statistical computerprogram impress us with something we all know already for decades :confused:

[ideayoda]

Interestingly who is going to present this at the FEI meeting? There is no standing dressage committee UNTIL the meeting. Seems they dont follow their own rules of order.

[ShotenStar]

Interestingly who is going to present this at the FEI meeting? There is no standing dressage committee UNTIL the meeting. Seems they dont follow their own rules of order.

The FEI Dressage Task Force is the group who sponsored the study, so having them present the results violates no rules; they are reporting on one of the items they were chartered to investigate.

*star*

[eurodressage]

Theo: Because now it is SCIENTIFICALLY proven and not just blah blah from detractors!