Setting jumps before the event. Photo courtesy of Genevieve Faith.
Genevieve Faith is a rider and trainer who has gone a step further to learn all about cross country course designing. While Genevieve manages her training business, she has been working on getting her cross country course designer license.
Genevieve’s curiosity got the best of her when she started wondering why exactly certain jumps are set in certain places out on course. She wanted to learn more, so she set out to get her cross country course designer license. “Our sport needs to continue to provide a safe environment for the horses and riders and a fun environment,” she said.
“I had an amazing mare that brought me up through the intermediate level and I started to pay attention a lot more to why my coaches were setting up certain terrain questions.” Genevieve’s natural instinct to gain more knowledge has served her well in this process. “Once I do something, I want to learn more and that was really interesting. So then, I just kept pursuing more education on it.”
The best part about the process to get your cross country course designer license is that you can go through all the training just for the educational aspect of it — you aren’t required to sit for the test. First, you go to the USEA Training Program for Licensed Officials (TPEO), which is hosted twice a year where “you go for two days and you work exclusively with a top designer and you go through and you walk courses.” At the training, the designers give you feedback on what you need to improve on and which rules you should review in the rulebook.
Genevieve and Burned You Too at the 3* at Chatt Hills. Photo courtesy of JJ Sillman.
“You don’t have to want to become a course designer to go and do these two days of training. It does help everybody understand different concepts that designers use and why they do certain things. I think a lot of trainers should actually go do it because it gives a really good perspective.”
Once you get certified at the training, you apprentice with at least two upper level designers for a minimum of eight hours each. “I want more hours working with people, so I’m continuously still pursuing more work, more apprenticeship, more time, making sure I understand it before I go and essentially say I’m comfortable with putting out a course and these riders can go out and ride it,” Genevieve said.
When working on your apprenticeships, most of the time, you’re helping them before an event. “They’ve used their course maps and they have a general idea of where each jump is going to go for each level.” The first day or so, you’re moving jumps around on the course.
“You learn firstly, communication: how to communicate with someone on a tractor who can’t hear you and they’re moving these thousand pound jumps. You have to be able to do some hand signals and show them where you want a jump to be lowered, how you want it to be lowered, if it should be tilted just slightly.”
Once you’ve completed your apprenticeship hours, you can sit for the exam, which includes a paper exam as well as setting courses for a panel of judges. “You want to go into it with your best approach and obviously that means you have to take time and study the art of course designing.”
The certification levels for a course designer are as follows: r, R, S, and FEI Levels. A certification is required for each level. Most of the time, it is preferred if designers have competed at the upper levels so they have an understanding of course design concepts at most of the levels.
A lot goes into course designing, and it doesn’t all just look like designing a course and making course maps. “At a horse show, especially the designers, they spend a minimum of a week out there moving jumps, changing them, leveling them, checking distances. I mean there’s so much that goes into it.”
Understanding things like the fact that the jump decorations are there for the horse to see where the jump is and how terrain affects striding are important aspects to becoming a course designer. “There is actually a why behind every single fence out there, the course designer has not just thrown in a fence out there in the middle of nowhere just to give you a speed bump. Every single fence out there is placed meticulously to help the rider.”
Course designing is all about educating the rider as well as the horse at each level. “Having a horse understand a question is the other half of it. You always want the horse to get rewarded throughout the course for doing a good job, and that’s tricky too, doing a course like that,” she said.
Making sure all the final touches are in order. Photo courtesy of Genevieve Faith.
Genevieve recognizes the need for course designers, especially if we want to keep our sport going. “We’re taking lives into our hands, essentially. And we’re making this safe for the horses and the riders.”
As much as we may think it, course designers aren’t putting a jump by the water because they know you absolutely despise jumps by the water. “They’re out to help teach the horse, train the horse continuously, help the horse’s education,” Genevieve said.
She said that if anyone has any questions about a course they’ve ridden, they should definitely reach out to the designer to ask what their theory was or why they set a question up a certain way.
Genevieve originally planned to take her official license test at Morven Park in October, but realized she wanted to take the test again later in February. “It was one of those moments, I said ‘Wait, I felt super prepared coming into this and I still feel prepared, but at the same time I want to be 100% sure.’ I admitted to myself when I was there, I don’t have enough experience going out and setting fences.”
Genevieve went through the motions of setting a course and explaining to the course designers why certain decisions were made at Morven Park, but she wanted more hands-on experience with putting the questions in place. Since she is inherently booksmart, she was confident in course planning and measuring, and was also confident in executing the set-up of the course, but ultimately wanted more experience under her belt.
Jumps on jumps on jumps! Photo courtesy of Genevieve Faith.
“I don’t want someone to get seriously injured because I didn’t take an extra month or two going out and doing more apprentice work. I was really glad we discussed how I can do that more,” she said.
In preparation for her test in February, Genevieve plans on volunteering for jump decorating at events. “I never thought I’d do [that] before. I didn’t realize how much those little things play an important role if you don’t always have to do it.”
She’s getting her hands on any experience she can, offering to design full show jump courses for her friends. At the end of the day, Genevieve wants to make sure she feels more than ready to have riders compete on her courses.
“Am I comfortable sending a horse and rider that’s not me? Am I super confident in this? Realizing you might have 100 people going through your course, knowing that you feel like it’s safe, that’s a lot of big things to think about. I think that’s important for anybody thinking about course designing in the future -– how much responsibility it is but also how rewarding it is.”
Go Eventing.
