TALKING POINT

Reforming the scoring system

WAYNE CHANNON, secretary general of the International Dressage Riders Club (IDRC), gave a simple trial of a proposed reform of FEI judging (news, p7), based on a deductive system. The aim of the IDRC’s proposed changes is to ensure greater precision and consistency in judges’ marks.

Wayne’s software engineer colleague John Millis has developed an app for recording marks and judges’ verbal comments electronically.

“We wanted to see if the app would be usable by judges — it was a success in that respect — and to gauge whether experienced judges would understand our codification,” said Wayne. “There are 58 deductions for passage alone, and nobody can process all that during a movement.

“We sought to provide a system that allows fine increments in deductions for ‘errors’.”

Briefly, 0.1 will be deducted for a minor (momentary) error; 0.5 for a significant (occasional) error, 1 for a major (frequent) error and 2 (or more) for a serious (constant) error. This is in contrast with the current system where a minimum deduction of 0.5 can be made.

“Today our guinea pig judges were looking if they could, on certain movements, use the system to make appropriate deductions.”

A voice recording in the judge’s box would make comments directly available to riders.