Learn about Olympic Equestrian Jumping Course

Olympic Equestrian Jumping Course - Lesson by Equestrian expert Pie Lafferty

Hi! I am Pie Lafferty and you are watching a show, jumping demonstration. In this segment, I would like to show you a little bit about the courses. So let's being with describing what standards are. These are standards. This is an upright standard, it is obviously what you put the poles on and the jumps on. But it is a schooling standard. The recognized standards for show jumping will be in a rectangular or an angled form about three feet wide, they are called Wing standards. This first fence is an Oxer. An Oxer is a spread jump. Now we are going to walk the distance between this fence and the out, it's called an In-and-Out or may be called a Double. So we are going to go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven; seven times three is 21 feet. The way this works as a horse travels on an average, on a 12 foot stride. So as you set jumps, you set them on multiples of 12 feet. So we say that you take 6 feet on the landing and 6 feet on the take-off. Now in this case, this is a gymnastic in-and-out and it is set 3 feet short of a one-stride, of a normal one-stride. A normal one-stride is 24 feet, this is 21. So again, every step I take is going to be 3 feet; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, right to the base of the pole. Now, that's Oxer to Oxer, called Square Oxers, which means it's the same height at the front or the back of the element, so you can approach this from either direction. Now I am going to walk the next line in a little different form. Alright, so we are going to walk this line in a little different form. First of all, I want to tell you two things. This is called a Bending Line. Alright, the second thing you need to know is all fences have a line that dissects it down the center, every single jump; your job is to find that straight line and ride to it, so all jumping is a series of circles to straight lines. Now this is how we are going to jump this fence, this line, excuse me. We are going to do this; one, two, that's the 6 feet that the horse lands on. Then we go, one, two, three, one, one, two, three, two, one, two, three, three, one, two, three, four, one and a little bit. So that is a little bit of a short four, which is a little bit, probably about 57 to 58 feet instead of 60. But it does run down hill and this is a Bending Line, so you can make up footage by cutting in a little bit or staying out a little bit. So you can make it longer or shorter, according to how you ride it. Now, the lines come across this, and they run across the center; this one, particularly goes to the East. The one to the Double or the In-and-Out runs straight to the South. So you make both these points meet by staying round to your turns, straight to your Double, ride this straight line until you find the line that dissects this fence and if you do that correctly, you'll have a very smooth ride. Alright, now let's walk about the other direction and see if anything changes. Now here we go, alright, one, two, one, two, three, one, one, two, three, two, one, two, three, three, one, two, three, four, one, two. Yes it does. If I am coming up to this way, to the North, it rides at 60 feet. So that is because the ring is down hill. So riding one direction, it will be more forward, riding the other direction, it will be tighter. Now that just begins to show you that there are other elements to consider for instance, the depth of your footing, the angles of your fences, the levelness of your ring, and all of those make a difference on how your horse canters across the ground. In our next clip, we will be going in to riding the course.