Fouarge, Schule, Lette Step Down as Judging Supervisory Panel Members

Dressage

FEI Dressage News

Judging Supervisory Panel members Ghislain Fouarge, Dieter Schüle and Eric Lette have handed in their immediate resignation after a discussion at the 2014 World Equestrian Games followed by the FEI denying the Panel more authority to improve the judging system.

The upset in the Judging Supervisory Panel has its origin at the 2014 World Equestrian Games. There was a disagreement in the allocation of points to certain movements in general, even though the three panelists were able to undersign their changes univocally. Schule told Eurodresage that "in Caen we had different opinions about the definition of points in the catalog and we had wished more clearness."

The Judging Supervisory Panel is a team of experienced judges and a trainer which checks all running scores of the ground jury for accidental mistakes, slips-of-the eye. When there is a difference of two points or more within the marking of the individual judges, the JSP is allowed to correct this. They have to stay within the range of the points given by the ground jury and can not go two points up or down on the the highest or lowest score of a judge, even if the JSP were to disagree. The JSP has led to moreaccurate scoring and the initiative has been applauded by the high performance dressage community. "The JSP also has as goal to protect the ground jury from discussions and to come to a more fair and correct end results," Fouarge added.

The Judging Supervisory Panel was established in 2011. Current JSP members are David Hunt, Mary Seefried, Ghislain Fouarge, Dieter Schüle and Eric Lette. At the 2014 World Equestrian Games the JSP members were Hunt, Fouarge, and Schüle changed 127 marks out of a total of approximantely 20,000 marks in the Grand Prix and 60 out of approximately 6,500 marks in Grand Prix Special.

"Our changes had no influence on the ranking," Schüle stated.

Ghislain Fouarge To prevent more internal discussion about the allocation of points at future shows, JSP members Lette, Schüle and Fouarge (in agreement with JSP member Mary Seefriend) have asked the FEI for more authority and clarity. They sent a proposal to the FEI headquarters and FEI Dressage Committee two weeks ago.

"At the moment our hands are tied and it means that our functioning is extremely limited," Fouarge told Eurodressage. "The only thing we can change now are counting mistakes in the tempi changes, a missed tempi, too few steps in piaffe, etc."

Schule, Lette and Fouarge believe that the JSP can have a more constructive impact on the judging of the dressage sport if they could get more liberty not only to correct point differences, but also to have the possibility to develop the judging system and to improve the standard of judging.

"We would like to be authorized to change considerate point differences (and not just accidental mistakes)," Fouarge explained, "but only if the judges clearly disagree amongst one another. We would like to be able to approach judges when they are too far off from the others, for whatever reason."

At an in-person meeting in Paris on 8-9 October 2014 the FEI Dressage Committee rejected the proposal.

"As the JSP we would like to be able to provide a bigger input and get more responsibility to come to a more uniform judging, without putting ourselves in the judge's seat. It was only a proposal, open to discussion, but they wanted to stick to the old ways," said a disappointed Fouarge. The rejection of the proposal led to the immediate resignation of the most esteemed and valuable members of the actual JSP.

The FEI Dressage Committee will now have to discuss and agree upon the new JSP members which they will appoint, including a replacement for David Hunt, whose term ends this year. The next FEI Dressage Committee conference call meeting is on Monday 27 October 2014.