Performance Standards

A while back, there was this Epic Drama about performance standards, USEF's interest in requiring that riders prove proficiency at a level before moving up to the next. There was a lot of name-calling and silliness amid the very good points - how the program, as it was written, was "beatable" by riders who picked their shows more wisely than others, how it favored quality horse over quality riding, how the number of scores required put riders in less dressage-heavy parts of the country at a disadvantage, etc. The plan was defeated, and there was talk of replacing it with a "rider test," judged not like a USEF dressage test but like the Young Horse tests, with a series of collective scores at the end, and that was sort-of the last we heard of it.

I have another idea.

First, USEF's tests need to go the way of the FEI, and make the coefficient for the Gaits score a 1. There's a great article in this month's Dressage Today about the FEI's test rewrites, and the weight of the collective marks at different FEI levels, but which is interesting, but the crux of the article for me was a line about upper-level dressage needing to reward the quality of the TRAINING, and how it improves the horse, not the god-given quality of the horse.

Then, we address the "Rider" coefficient. USEF recently changed that coefficient to a 3. In my system, nothing would change at Training, First or Second Levels. At Third Level, that Rider coefficient would go up to a 4, and a Fourth Level, a 5. 8s on Rider at those levels would easily put talented riders on not-so-talented horses back in the ballgame, "cancelling out" 5s on medium and extended gaits; 5s on Rider would set back those counting on the quality of their horses to get them through.

Now, we all now that the PSG is basically easier than 4th level, so there's need to be some "performance standard-esque" requirement for moving up to PSG - X 4th level scores of Y%, or whatever. But this would be MUCH cheaper and easier to maintain than the previously suggested program, a major complaint. More importantly, in my mind, it puts the focus back where it should be - on the quality of riding.