Peter Barry received a Fédération Equestre Internationale yellow card and Kelli Temple a verbal warning at the Jaguar Land Rover Bromont Three-Day Event, held June 4-7 in Quebec.
In the CIC**, Barry was given a yellow card on Long Island T for “dangerous riding/jumping a fence of a higher level.” Barry, a Canadian amateur, jumped a three-star fence accidentally.
“I did have a blonde moment. I got distracted for a short time, and I made a mistake,” Barry said. “The jumps are very identical looking, side by side, and I got distracted for a short moment and jumped the advanced jump.”
Barry understood the ground jury’s decision to card him. He was also eliminated for jumping an incorrect fence.
“It’s disappointing to me that I didn’t deliver what my horse deserves, and I hope there will be a moment where I can make it up to him,” he said.
Temple, riding Matilda in the CCI**, received a verbal warning for “incorrect behavior/presenting a horse with blood on its front side.” The mare was also spun by the ground jury at the second horse inspection.
“She felt absolutely fabulous, bold, careful, fast, really good, and unfortunately she grabbed her heel,” Temple said of her cross-country ride. “I think it was actually at the beginning of the course. I took the long way at the coffin, and she had to jump sort of a natural ditch to start out with, and I think she might have just grabbed it there.”
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Temple said she had the heel wrapped overnight, and she removed the wrap for presentation the next morning.
“With the wrap she was OK, but when we had to take the wrap off to present her it sort of slowly started to open up again,” Temple said. “As the mare moved more, and she went into the hold, and they sort of manipulated the leg and poked around on the heel, it opened it up, and that was unfortunate. Obviously I would never present a horse that I thought wasn’t capable of being sound enough to do the show jumping and the whole nine yards; it was just one of those unfortunate situations.”
The ground jury included Christian Landolt, Jane Tolley, Sue Baxter, Helen Christie and Robert Stevenson. Landolt, who was the president of the ground jury, explained via email why Temple received the verbal warning instead of a yellow card.
“In the situation with Kelli Temple: We interviewed her after the horse inspection. We listened to her evidence in full, also taking into consideration the advice she gained from her own [veterinarian]. In balance of all the information gained, the ground jury unanimously came to the conclusion that in this instance an official warning was the appropriate sanction,” Landolt stated.
As the FEI rule on yellow cards stands now, there is no standardized way to apply it—the same offense can earn a warning or a card depending on the discretion of the ground jury. FEI technical delegate Roger Haller, who wasn’t the TD at Bromont but has officiated at three-day events at every level, sees this as a positive.
“The ground jury always has to make a decision, and that’s not a bad thing,” Haller said. “We want the ground jury to use their judgment to make the most effective decision at that moment to try to stop some type of behavior that is not acceptable.
“The FEI does not want to limit that judgment,” Haller continued. “Decisions about sportsmanship, decisions about abuse, decisions about dangerous riding, those are difficult decisions, and you have to have a comfortable feeling about reaching that decision. And if you do, we’ll back you up, and if you decide differently the next time, we’ll still back you up because we have confidence in your judgment as a delegate.”
