‘Britain’s age classes for young horses are crying out to be modernised,’ says Carmen Edwards

While watching the World Breeding Championship for Young Horses at Lanaken on live stream, I thought the optimum time format was a brilliant initiative.

The organisers introduced it this year for the five-year-old classes and it was fascinating to see riders try to get as close to the optimum as possible, each with a different strategy. In many ways, I found it more engaging than watching people trying to win against the clock.

It’s a format that could even work for big classes, allowing the course-builder to create options so riders have to calculate which route would be most effective for their horse.

It’s definitely something that should be introduced for age classes in Britain though, which are crying out to be modernised, especially for four-year-olds. Currently, arena hires can be a more attractive option for this age group, compared to a competition format that works against them.

At a show, you need to warm up, probably jump the practice fence four or five times, then jump a course of 11 or 12 fences. If it’s a single-phase or two-phase, you might jump two doubles. This is something a four-year-old needs to build up to, not face straight away.

The challenge of courses should become apparent when horses are older. If a child is playing rugby, they’ll play tag before contact, or if they’re playing football, they’ll play five-a-side before 11-a-side. We should be setting smaller goals for our horses.

Rather than expecting a four-year-old to jump a full course, I would present them with eight fences including a double, and for five-year-olds, 10, increasing to 12 fences for six-year-olds and so on. This allows them to build their stamina.

More flexible rules around refusals in four-year-old classes, permitting up to three and with the only penalty being time, would also allow better opportunities to educate horses in the ring.

Creating champions

I think there is also an opportunity to rethink the winter classic series and how we use it to produce young horses. At the moment, the winter classics provide no classes to aim young horses at. The newcomers or the SEIB winter novice at 1.10m are often the entry point.

What if we had two winter classics with four- and five-year-old classes, and two for six- and seven-year-olds? Breeders need producers who can buy and develop youngsters, and make a living from it, to put money back into the system so they can breed the next foal. Without that economy, we would have no sport. The show system needs to support it.

Lacking suitable entry points into the sport for four-year-olds is a little like the plans to axe the major 128cm championships.

In Manchester United’s heyday under Alex Ferguson, if there was a younger kid there to take a jersey off an older player, he wasn’t afraid of moving the older player on. That’s how you make champions – by keeping talent coming through. If you can’t plant the seed, nothing grows.

A home winter tour

With the cost of going abroad ever increasing, we could still benefit from a winter tour in the UK, if that’s something a major show centre could accommodate.

Without that, the focus remains on the winter classics, but does the series need to be so drawn out?

We learnt during Covid that we don’t necessarily need to go from show to show without a break, so could we make it more concentrated, with two weekends at the end of October, two in November and a final in early December?

If the qualifiers were condensed, it would give everyone a clearer target to work towards and allow some time to reset over Christmas, and to enjoy the London International.

● How would you change the British show system to better support young horses? Let us know your thoughts at hhletters@futurenet.com, including your name, nearest town and county, for the chance to have your thoughts published in a future issue of Horse & Hound magazine

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