BY PIPER KLEMM
Imagine you are standing at a Premier horse show, the highest level of USEF horse show that this country has to offer. It is World Champion Hunter Week, attracting the best of the best and the most hunters.
The horse is groomed and shines to an inch of their life and is perfectly conditioned. Beautiful head and expression, the hunter trots in with a trot that can only be described as floating, but even so it’s hard to look away from how brightly the bit metal shines and glints in the sunlight. The gleam of the tall boots seems to echo across the footing as the canter rhythm begins and never changes.
The horse finds eight perfectly even and rhythmic distances and, some might say, flawlessly leaves the ground. It jumps in textbook form and lands like a ballerina with ears pricked on the next jump. No corners were cut, and truly nothing could be flawed in the highest-level horse show at the highest rating of sport in a division with the deepest rankings of national USEF standings of all divisions.
The crowd, albeit sparse and with many of them hired to be there in some form by the rider in the ring, goes wild. The hooting and hollering gives way to dog noises, with a strained and imprecise attempt at whistling thrown in for good measure. Make no mistake, the message reaches the judge loud and clear.
“And last to go lays down an 82 and wins the first trip,” says the familiar voice of some dude that narrates your dreams, but you truly wouldn’t recognize if he walked up to you.
Something in you knows the blue is right, but hearing the 82 makes you want to scream. Yes, it’s about the order and not the score, but… is it? What on earth could this person have done to get a 100? Why a B- if it won against the highest level of sport rating that our sport has to offer, and in the deepest national division there is?
Oh, yes, and this division was Low Adult Hunters.
In case you missed it, the 2’6” Low Adult Hunters is a National division with horse of the year national championships from USEF. It has over 2,000 horses nationally with points, compared with 64 total High Performance Conformation Hunters with any points. Its current national champion, High Society, is owned by Michael Britt-León, with 2,120.2 points from December 1 through the Bluegrass Festival Horse Show in 13 shows.
We can discuss whether this is good for sport or industry or USHJA until we are blue in the face and remember that USEF doesn’t care what we think. The reality is that the Low Adult Hunter division is lining their pockets as the biggest Hunter division at many horse shows. It is literally keeping the whole Titanic afloat. So for now at least, it’s full steam ahead with hubris and no life rafts needed.
Which is where it gets interesting: a national championship Horse of the Year world champion hunter is, in reality, insulated against the highest scores in our sport.
I asked several dozen judges for their honest opinions about whether they would ever even hypothetically give a 2’6” Low Adult Hunter a score of 100 or even 99. I was laughed at, given incredulous looks, and even got eye rolls from the most credible officials in our sport.
And why? Well, because the jumps are only 2’6”. Since when did smaller obstacles stop the pursuit of perfection?
Where do we stand that we have a division based on perfection where the Hunter ideal “cannot be achieved” because the “jumps are so low.” What even is the ideal in the Low Adult Hunters?
Clearly, to jump the 2’6” like it’s 3’6”, as we see many derby horses rewarded for being a foot over seems wrong and is usually not rewarded, but also sometimes it is so it isn’t actually that clear. To be judged on performance and soundness… couldn’t that mean a 100 performance on a perfectly even and balanced sound horse?
But even more fundamentally, does it somehow cheapen other divisions to allow a 100 in the 2’6” Low Adult Hunters… or even encourage it? What about a 95? If we’re chasing after an unattainable ideal, how unattainable does it need to be at each incremental level to be unattainable enough? Can a judge give a 90 at an outreach show, or is simply being present at an outreach show required to train you to cap it at an 85 at best?
Is there a Low Adult test grade of an A- that is congruent with our high-performance athletes? Should only Amateur Owner 3’6” Hunters even be capable of scoring a 98, and even then only when they have the entire International Ring to gallop around in? If you’re showing in a smaller ring because you jump lower jumps in your nationally rated division at a Premier show, are you simply working again off the best that could ever happen 85?
This is a hard conversation because many of us see score inflation and have heard stories of show managers encouraging judges to throw big scores to make the exhibitors feel good. We all see the splits in multiple panels staring at the exact same thing. It’s a huge balance to be inclusive of as many people as we can and still hold incredibly high standards. And while when I was a child it was points, points, points, mostly of local and regional and maybe zone varieties, that has given way to today’s experience-based finals, finals, finals, and more finals culture.
As is typical, we are stuck in our canonical rut—is this a sport or is this an industry?
If this is a sport, I believe that those elites who excel at a national level should be able to throw down a 95. If this is an industry, customer service would dictate that we reward the effort of the Low Adult rider who absolutely slays the 2’6” with a 95. But if the 2’6” Hunter is truly incapable of earning a 100 no matter what they do out there and is a score that any division is incapable of, then this is not a national division.
We were told last night on the USHJA call that everything has changed and we must look into the future. If this is the future imposed upon us, scoring shouldn’t be left in the past. If we truly believe en masse that jumping 2’6” is a national-level division with finals and horse of the year to match—let them eat cake. Serve up that 100.
