Lec, an Eventing Nation regular and guest writer from the UK, attended the Glanusk horse trials over the weekend. Lec sent us this report with her thoughts and observations about Prologs, which are styrofoam logs that you might remember reading about in our Rolex coverage. Thanks for writing this lec and thank you for reading.
—-
From lec:
This weekend saw the very first Glanusk International Horse Trials in the UK. Running levels from Novice, Training, Prelim, Intermediate and CCI 1*.
This was the first event in the UK that was trialling polystyrene logs – Prolog. I was lucky enough to chat to the fence judges, Eric Winter the course designer and Canadian eventer Mike Winter who designed the Prolog and who was watching and videoing the fence to see how it jumped.
The fence had an upright log going into the water and then up a small mound to the second upright log. Both of these fences were made of Prolog. The fence judge told me that in the Intermediate it had been riding horribly and riders seemed to be taking far too many risks into the fence. Three riders had snapped the fence out of about 40 entries in the Intermediate. The fence judge was not convinced by these fences as they had seen some bad riding. Several of these were experienced pros and felt that people did not have the respect they should have had for it.
Links: Glanusk homepage, WFP’s Glanusk recap, Prolog site
Snapped logs.
I asked Mike Winter why this was happening and it appears that one horse completely breasted it when coming in far too fast, another horse had left a leg and another had stopped but went through the fence. Mike Winter was of the opinion that by using the Prolog it has stopped a rotational fall. Mike has video of the fence which I am hoping to get a copy of in order to post on EN.
Look at all the marks on the log.
The same fences had been in the 1* but nobody had snapped them. The main difference between the 1* and the Intermediate was that the course was roped differently. The 1* approached the fence straight while the Intermediate riders came off a turn.
Another factor is that they made a change for the Intermediate in the posts holding the fence up. In the 1* it should have collapsed but did not so they cut away to make it break. On this photo you can see where they have cut away more from the posts.
Interestingly at BE events there are no penalties for breaking the log but the fence judge has the discretion to give penalties if the horse has stopped then broken the log.
Eric Winter is a designer who builds bold courses and one of the influences you could clearly see on his course was the open corners that we saw at Badminton. Eric took over Blenheim 3* two years ago and I expect to see him design 4* courses very soon. All his courses are very horse friendly but scare the rider and need attacking.
Lots of the fences had frangible pins.
This is a brand new course so for me it was interesting to see what direction course designers are taking. All the levels were big and bold. This seems to be the fashion at the moment in the UK where riders have to really kick and be brave. I understand there will be a feedback session from the Prolog so it will be interesting to see what the consensus is.
