“Science-informed decision-making” is the best way forward, the FEI introduced at its basic meeting (10-13 November 2024), when revealing new methods to maintain horse sport’s social licence to function and, particularly, to win again public belief in dressage. However the place its start line is for brand new analysis into hyperflexion is unclear.
This, together with the subject of blue tongues, are the 2 points that almost all upset dressage critics and welfare advocates. However how does the FEI fee research into blue tongues (aka cyanosis) or hyperflexion, by no means thoughts how and if they’re related, when the FEI or its stakeholder teams barely acknowledge their existence?
The FEI “condemned” hyperflexion in 2010, however you received’t discover the phrases hyperflexion (or blue tongues) anyplace in FEI dressage sport guidelines, nor in FEI veterinary and basic laws, or within the on-line FEI dressage judging guide.
Reference to hyperflexion within the warm-up enviornment does seem within the FEI dressage stewards on-line guide, in a single sentence that’s mild on instruction: “Lengthy, deep and spherical using is accepted, except used excessively or extended (hyperflexion of the neck). There’s a hazard when copied by unskilled riders. There’s a fantastic line between coaching and overtraining!”
FEI judging pointers, that are solely out there as a tough copy guide, stipulate that hyperflexion must be penalised, as a result of the horse can be judged to be over-bent. However judges are tasked with marking what they see in entrance of them, not what they believe was accomplished at house to attain it.
In a earlier article trying on the debate round utilizing double bridles, David Hunt, president of the Worldwide Dressage Trainers Membership (IDTC) and a member of the FEI Judges Supervisory Panel, commented: “Judges don’t overlook issues with contact or self-carriage, however should rating the totality of the train. Nevertheless issues with head carriage or contact are at all times famous within the feedback.”
{Photograph} proof of horses behind the vertical or with open mouths throughout a dressage take a look at is commonly disregarded as depicting “a second in time.” At a latest press briefing, IDTC secretary basic Linda Keenan cautioned towards conflating with abuse any efficiency that didn’t meet the perfectionist goals of dressage.
On the similar briefing, Klaus Roeser, representing the Worldwide Dressage Riders Membership (IDRC), mentioned: “Restricted data will come to restricted solutions by individuals who haven’t any actual understanding of how to have a look at the horse as an entire; at what’s warm-up, what’s stretching, what’s ‘simple’ using and what’s aggressive using. To say ‘the horse is behind the vertical, that’s dangerous’, is completely silly.”
An deadlock of this magnitude will not be the place the FEI and its dressage stakeholders must be at this vital second for equestrianism.
How did hyperflexion turn into so in style?
The method of coaching a horse in an exaggerated, rounded define with the neck low and head tucked in in direction of the chest has historic roots however was re-popularised by Dutch staff coach Sjef Janssen within the Nineteen Nineties. His accomplice and pupil Anky van Grunsven took three Olympic particular person golds (Sydney 2000, Athens 2004 and Beijing/Hong Kong 2008) and a number of world and European golds with Bonfire and Salinero.
Janssen didn’t sit on a horse till he was 28, however went on to journey dressage for seven hours a day. In 1999 he gave an interview to Australian journalist Chris Hector. Janssen mentioned: “Primary, I’m for classical dressage, the best way it’s imagined to look within the FEI guidelines. However my philosophy of coaching is totally different; I deal with horses like athletes, as a substitute of utilizing the classical coaching strategies as a result of I don’t suppose they work any extra.
“The horses are totally different, there’s far more Thoroughbred in them, so you need to strategy them in a different way, additionally mentally. The horses previously had been these actually heavy horses, and also you didn’t want to coach them a lot within the decrease body as a result of they had been very tough to bend and flex.
“While you present a horse you carry it up in entrance, and present it in its full glory, on its haunches, mild within the forehand – however I believe should you attempt to practice a horse that means day by day, he won’t be able to bodily stand it. He’ll get a number of again ache.
“Lots of people suppose we over-bend the horses and that may damage the neck and the again. However two professors … have proved that using the horse at all times up, could be very harmful for the horse, and using them deep is superb for the horse, particularly the neck and the flexibleness.”
Historical past doesn’t relate if the professors talked about revealed their examine.
Is it rollkur or hyperflexion?
The time period rollkur was disparagingly coined by Professor Heinz Meyer in prime German journal Reiten St Georg in 1992, however in that pre-internet period articles deemed controversial had been scarcely learn exterior the writer’s nation.
Fifteen years later, St Georg editor Gabriele Pochhammer seen that different prime horses suspected of being educated with rollkur had been tense, nappy, even refusing to begin. Pochammer referred to as out rollkur. The German and Dutch dressage groups had been arch rivals – nevertheless it was notable that St Georg criticised German practitioners, too.
In 2006, a FEI workshop concluded that hyperflexion – rollkur’s new, softer identify – had implications for respiration and psychological stress, although was unlikely to trigger “lasting injury” in skilled arms. However in 2008 a FEI welfare subcommittee denounced it as equine psychological abuse.
In 2010, the FEI redefined it as flexion of the horse’s neck achieved by way of “aggressive” pressure. Diagrams in FEI manuals confirmed a distinction between aggressive using with the pinnacle tucked in, and the extra elongated posture referred to as “low deep and spherical (LDR)” which is suitable for brief spells within the warm-up. The terminology nonetheless confuses observers. The FEI “condemned” hyperflexion and “didn’t help it” in 2010, however didn’t unequivocally ban it within the rulebooks.
What does the analysis say?
Whereas the FEI is now urgently funding its personal welfare research, an unbelievable 58 peer-reviewed, unbiased research into hyperflexion exist already world wide (peer assessment means they’ve been assessed by different scientists as a way to be revealed in a bona fide educational journal).
In Australia, the a lot embellished veterinary researcher Professor Paul McGreevy and colleagues final month revealed a meta examine of all 58. Only one – by a single Dutch researcher – discovered hyperflexion doubtlessly helpful, in a 2006 examine evaluating elite dressage horses with leisure ones.
The overwhelming majority concluded hyperflexion had welfare “implications”, with 28 saying welfare was impaired. Of 14 concentrating on equine behaviour, at the least 5 famous “frequencies of reported battle behaviours, akin to tail-swishing and irregular head and mouth actions, had been considerably better in horses ridden behind the vertical”.
In line with the meta-study, hallmarks {that a} horse has been so educated are decreased stride size, elevated elevation of the hindlimbs and elevated dorsoventral oscillation of the lumbar vertebrae.
The meta-study mentioned hyperflexion offers a aggressive benefit, as a result of judges reward the outcomes, regardless of being counter to what’s required within the competitors itself. The meta-study had a bit sympathy for officers: “Stewards within the warm-up enviornment are anticipated to make assessments of rein pressure or a horse’s state of stress and/or fatigue with out empirical information.
“That is problematic, provided that educated judges have problem detecting rein pressure as an attribute referred to as lightness, and equestrian professionals can not concur on manifestations of stress within the ridden horse.”
Campaigns towards hyperflexion
The stop-hyperflexion campaigner Dr Eva van Avermaet is a recognisable determine across the warm-up at main CDIs in continental Europe. Although a full-time vet, this yr she attended Amsterdam, Lier, Aachen, Fontainebleau, Compiègne, Ermelo, Lyon and Stuttgart CDIs and a few nationwide reveals in France.
She says she has been threatened many instances, together with as soon as when accompanied by a journalist whom the organisers mistook for an “activist” and tried to manhandle off the showground; and one other when a coach’s associates tried to grab her digital camera.
Eva says about half the stewards take her significantly. The others both snort or “discuss down” to her. “These ones react to me in precisely the identical means the riders react to them. So I’m very effectively conscious of the issue [for stewards] and the braveness it takes to maintain on stepping-up to ensure the principles are enforced.
“A couple of younger riders do attempt to do issues in a different way – I can see that, and I’m comfortable about that; they know I’m. However the elite riders aren’t turning into higher riders. They’re turning into higher hiders.”
Eva’s curiosity in hyperflexion started when she joined an equine observe in France. All her new shoppers had been using behind the vertical – opposite to what she realized in her native Belgium.
“It grew to become clear it was a technique used as a brief minimize, a fast repair, to regulate horses, to supply spectacular actions,” mentioned Eva. “It was this ‘false assortment’ my instructors had advised and warned me about. And the elite riders had been massively utilizing it and being rewarded. What was happening within the warm-ups of the high-level dressage competitions was outrageous.”
In 2018, Eva was “shocked, upset and indignant” to witness a number of Cadre Noir écuyers (riders) and college students utilizing hyperflexion, and took to Fb. “They’re imagined to be the guardians of classical French equitation, not copycats of competitors riders,” she advised H&H.
After a gathering with the Cadre Noir in 2020, Eva and different attendees discovered the impetus to arrange the Collectif Pour Les Chevaux and widen their marketing campaign. As soon as depicted as a “loopy” vet, she is now usually invited to deal with worldwide veterinary conferences on hyperflexion.
It was a specific coup when the 1976 Olympic dressage champion Christine Stuckelberger spoke on the Collectif’s spring 2024 convention. Mrs Stuckelberger mentioned she seen one other destructive evolution of hyperflexion when spectating at Aachen final yr. “Now, the riders don’t wish to present the judges that they’re nonetheless rolling [sic], so now they’ve the pinnacle extra up, however nonetheless very tight.
“You see some horses’ heads in entrance of the vertical, however when the neck is a lot increased than the ballot it’s a signal it has been ridden in rollkur. It’s unhappy to see it in younger horse courses; one thing else needs to be behind the building-up of this neck so excessive.
“Many riders within the previous instances experimented too, however discovered the horse couldn’t perform. The horse is at all times the identical – he should be comfortable in his physique.”
The Collectif’s aim was to “finish hyperflexion, over-tightened nosebands and brutal aids” by the Paris Olympic Video games. “We had been extraordinarily naïve,” Eva displays.
● What are your ideas on the present use of hyperflexion? Write to us at hhletters@futurenet.com, together with your identify, nearest city and nation, for the possibility on your letter to look in a forthcoming subject of the journal
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