11/12/2023
The modern sport horse is ridden, trained and valued by a posture and movement pattern which is too round of neck.
Why?
If we stopped for a moment, stopped ourselves. Asked ourselves if what we are seeing in sport horses is healthy and valuable? What would the answer be? If we asked the horses, what would they say?
I think I understand it. We see a horse with a rounded neck, and we correlate bascule as basic excellence. Bascule IS one of the LAST signs of a properly collected and moving horse. Without it? They are still on their journey. They aren’t there yet.
We want to identify with the best of the best. And when the top competitors are rewarded for hyper flexion or excessive rounding of the neck off the reins the trickle down effect is enormous. The butterfly effect; a butterfly flaps it’s wings in Mexico and then in Japan, it snows. The concept that everything is an interconnected web, is made sense on our obsession for roundness. Because a gold medalist at the Olympics waves to a crowd and then 10 years later, on the opposite side of the world, a total amateur in a dark forgotten stable in some suburb somewhere clips on a draw rein trying to emulate some top sportsperson they never knew.
The modern sport horse is ridden with an obsession and fixation on roundness. But roundness is not the problem. This is where I’ve gone wrong at times. Throwing the baby out with the bath water. Associating roundness and the pursuit of it as a problem. It wasn’t.
The accelerated and exacerbated fixation in roundness from the beginning is the problem. True bascule of the cervical spine is truly the cherry on top after many years of slow behavioural and physical conditioning. Not to mention the connection, trust, and horsemanship required to gather a horses consenting cooperation to achieve such high level excellence.
Yet, horses are being held into roundness within minutes of their first ride, particularly in sport and sport derivatives. But sport isn’t the problem.
So what is? Impatience? Ignorance? Money?
The damage that does to a horses mind a body is profound, when we ride too round too soon. And yet they forgive us. Like us. And show up again and again. These modern sport horses have been bred with incredible temperaments, their ability to tolerate huge pressure, to not fight, to cooperate. They are selectively bred to confirm roundness from the beginning as an OK thing to do.
I’ve said for years, try holding round a mustang, or one of the mountain bred, backyard Spanish rehab cruzados I cut my teeth on, or the ordinary Arabian TB cross agricultural village horses I learned on. I’ve rarely had access to top sport horses, until I did. And the ones handed to me with the label of ‘sensitive and quirky’ turned out to feel dull and obedient to me, compared to the super touchy, opinionated horses I learned on that us lower income level mortals get access to.
Not to mention that ECVM and other genetic abnormalities are about to completely implode the modern sport horse breeding industry, so many of these horses ridden round functionally cannot stabilize their body, with or without training. These horses medical needs surpass their functional capabilities and not many manage it to top competition. It is changing, a top sport horse breeder in Germany this week openly publicized the castration and rehoming of one of their breeding stallions due to an ECVM diagnosis. They are the exception rather than the rule.
And in training, to retrain these horses to not give their rider a hyper round position requires the rider to basically start them again. Their bodies aligned with the pressure, the fear, the perfectionism communicated to them through unrelenting and misguided hands and now they don’t want to depart it. These horses feel as if it is their duty to give that to you. Because that’s what they know. And they are confused… often annoyed by us, when we don’t demand it.
It’s complex. It’s strangely controversial yet really shouldn’t be. I’m not the only voice here, at this point, hundreds of professionals, smarter and older than I have spoken on this.
Yet we continue to want to see a rounded horse.
Is it vanity? Is that what this comes down to, plain and simple? A rounded neck looks prettier than a flat one? It’s the conclusion I return to when my mind gets to wondering
