Under 21 Team Selection Policy
Written by Dressage Central // June 29, 2011 // News // 1 Comment
Congratulations to all of those selected for the Junior Team and Young Rider Individuals selected to go to the European Championships in Denmark this year. Its a fantastic experience so go and enjoy it.
See BD Website for more details.
Dressage Central is essentially set up as a News Service but there will be a few occasions where I feel an Editorial Comment is appropriate and the first of those occasions has arisen with the announcement that Great Britain will not be sending a Young Rider Team only two individual riders.
Firstly I must put my hand up and declare an interest. I am the owner of one of the Long Listed horses that was not selected but owning this horse has, for a number of years, given me a front row seat in the theatre of Under 21 Team selection. My issue however is not who has and who has not been selected, but the fact that is has been decided not to send a Young Rider Team at all.
I will also preface my comments with an acknowledgement of how difficult a job team selection is, and how many considerations have to be balanced.
Funding of all Olympic sports these days survives only on the oxygen of success and over the last few years there has not been a glut of Junior or Young Rider Medals. However I guess one question is whether the only objective of these Under 21 teams is to win medals or whether there is the wider objective of providing support and encouragement to young riders and the experience of international competition. Interestingly the selection policy published on the BD website specifies the “aims” of the selectors being to select the various squads and;
“To select a team that will achieve the best possible results for Great Britain at the Junior and Young Rider European Championships to be held on 21 – 24 July at Broholm, Denmark”.
There is no stated general aim in the selection policy of supporting and encouraging Young Riders. This is probably just as well because it is hard to think of a process more likely to discourage and undermine the confidence of these riders than the one they have gone through this year.
At the moment GB does not have the strength in depth of Under 21 riders coming through to challenge teams like Germany and Holland. I understand that in Germany there are usually about forty riders that come forward for each team and at the beginning of each year 15 are chosen to go forward into the selection process. Realistically therefore, at the moment, GB can only consider a bronze medal in the Team competitions as achievable.
Our Young Riders are required to take part in squad training weekends and Premier League competitions around the country over the winter and spring, and encouraged to compete abroad in mainland Europe. This is expensive and time consuming and requires a great deal of commitment from the riders, their families and their trainers. There is no financial support for this at all.
During this process there seems to very little real constructive dialog between the selectors and the riders, their families and trainers. As I have said, I appreciate that the selectors job is a difficult one but I don’t understand why they need be quite so insular. All horses and riders have strengths and weaknesses, which are not always apparent from the training and competing seen by the selectors. I would have though the selectors would want to maintain a close dialog with the riders and their connections but this does not seem to be the case.
So the Young Rider hopefuls this year have jumped through all the necessary hoops and then a few weeks ago a Long List was announced. At this point logic would suggest that the selectors would exclude from the list any rider they were not prepared to put on the Team. Since the Long List was announced some have had disappointing results, some have continued to perform consistently and others have improved. It is therefore difficult to understand why riders in the latter two categories are now seen as of an insufficient standard to form part of a team.
So if you were 18 and had a good horse, how would you view the whole Under 21 arena? Would you be encouraged to have a go or avoid it?
nd how would you feel as a young rider, who has been through the process, has had reasonable, if not dramatically good results, was put on the Long List, but is now considered of an insufficient standard for the team. The riders on the Long List are good riders. They deserve encouragement and support because they will be the riders of the future. These riders may not have the horsepower or experience to challenge for the top medals now, but in a few years they might have and then the experience of a European Championship would be invaluable.
And finally what message does it sends to other countries about what we think of your young riders that we are not even prepared to send a Team.
I would encourage BD to look again at the whole selection process again and see if it really reflects what they are trying to achieve.
Judy Sharrock
One Comment on "Under 21 Team Selection Policy"
This is a philosophical point about who the sport is supposed to be put on for, surely. It would be more to the point to refer to the objectives of the sport as a whole, and where young riders fit in that system. I agree that this should be clarified.
Sending young rider teams to championship has nothing to do with senior championship success, as anyone who is riding and training and improving, young rider or not, is potentially a ‘rider of the future’. Given that YR horsepower is rarely good enough to make the jump to big tour (Alf excepted, of course) even if the riders are good enough, they are no closer to achieving senior medals, if this is the ultimate aim of BD, than anyone who is training a horse for the future, with the ambition and talent to see it through. Conversely, if the aim of BD is just to encourage good riding and development of horses and riders, then a YR Championship appearance is also irrelevent. How many junior and YR team horses have been recycled by 3 or 4 different riders, or acquired fully-trained?
This isn’t to say it is not a fantastic learning opportunity, or that the riders themselves aren’t tremendously talented. If they are, they should not be discouraged by a selector’s decision but take it on the chin and either keep improving (good for the sport as a whole), or invest in an even better horse which might have championship (YR or otherwise) potential. Or go and do something else.
No-one ‘deserves’ a championship team appearance. Some of those young riders will be professional riders throughout their careers. If they are put off by not being allowed to compete at a European Championship because the selectors aren’t satisfied that they justify the expense than they won’t get very far in a career with horses. Alternatively, if they are off to continue their studies and will ride as a hobby, even a very serious one, in the future, then realistically it’s irrelevant to the development of British Dressage as a medal winning enterprise. Unless they end up being the owners of the future, or the customers of professional riders as pupils and buyers of ‘amateur’ horses.
I feel very sorry for the riders who feel the goalposts have been moved during the season. You can only beat who is there and it’s no-one rider’s fault if fields have been thin and standards lower. But if this is a symptom that young riders as an enterprise isn’t the best hunting ground for the dressage stars of the future, then resources should be diverted elsewhere. The selectors aren’t there to give anyone an ego boost, they are there to act in the interests of BD.