Icomprehensible!
Just imagine the following: There is the two-year-old Morion, who got not only the highest score in his respective classes at the All Nations Cup, the European and World Championships, but the highest score of all Junior Males. Human understanding would expect at least, that he would come home with three medals. But far from it. Twice, he became Gold Medal Champion, but at the European Championships, he had to go home empty handed!
We all know the attempts, to explain such “incidents” with explanations such as: a) The classes are judged analytically, the championships comparative – these are two different things; b) The classes take place at one day, the championships the following day, it may happen that a horse is “tired” and doesn’t “show” well enough anymore; c) The classes are judged only be a part of the judges panel, while the championships are judged by all judges, that can change the order; d) The scores are only used to rank the horses, they don’t have any further meaning, etc.
Even if in a particular case the judges decision in question can be explained with the above explanations, those responsible for the rules should consider, that with each case that is incomprehensible to the human mind, exhibitors will loose their faith in judges decisions, in the judges and in the organisers in general, because each judges decision has also an effect to the outside – and this effect is devastating!
When there are rules that stipulate, that classes and championships may be judged by a different number of judges, one does not wonder that this gives room for speculation: Who decides, which judge is judging which class? Did a Sponsor or participant have any influence on such a decision? And if it is possible – as laid down in the new Rules for Championships – that the Gold Champion may be chosen from all horses participating in the Championships (not only from the first placed horses), some people may even think that this was done to give more room for corruption, to “rectify” the final result. And if the European Championships applies all of a sudden a set of rules for the Championships that are not in the Blue Book, but only in the schedule and catalogue, then the question might be raised why it was so urgent to have different rules in place.
As long as our judging systems are getting more and more complicated with more and more “additional options”, the suspicion will stay that there is some cheating involved. Transparency, i.e. the publication of detailed results is good, but results should also be clear and understandable with some common sense, or otherwise there will still be room for speculation. And then, a judge at the European Championships ignores this colt Morion, although he has the quality to win twice Gold and win his classes with a wide margin. So, if he does not place this colt among the five best horses in the Championships, and the horse has to go home without any medal at all, then one should not be surprised that conspiracy theories and the suspicion of corruption are popping up like mushrooms – and perhaps not entirely without reason.
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GOLD CHAMPION JUNIOR COLTS Morion (Kahil Al Shaqab / Mezalina)Foto: G. Waiditschka / IN THE FOCUS
