While we’ve been holidaying over the summer (read: slogging through the heat working horses and trying to make back some of that money we spent competing last year!) a whole load of things have changed in our sport. Most of them are arbitrary changes to things like names of levels which are only going to confuse us for the next 10 years and beyond, but some of them are bigger than that.
Try getting your head around this. Four Star used to be the top. That was it. The biggest and the best and there was only a handful of them around the world, one of them down here in the southern hemisphere. Now we’re calling that Five Star. Same heights, same level of difficulty, new name – so your retired Four Star horse just got an upgrade without even having to get out of bed!
However, the World Championships and the Olympics – which are the pinnacle of the sport, right? Well they’re not going to be Five Star but kind of a mix of Five Star and Four Star as far as anyone can decipher. So the crème de la crème, but also not quite.
Try getting your head around this. Four Star used to be the top. That was it. The biggest and the best and there was only a handful of them around the world, one of them down here in the southern hemisphere. Now we’re calling that Five Star. Same heights, same level of difficulty, new name – so your retired Four Star horse just got an upgrade without even having to get out of bed!
However, the World Championships and the Olympics – which are the pinnacle of the sport, right? Well they’re not going to be Five Star but kind of a mix of Five Star and Four Star as far as anyone can decipher. So the crème de la crème, but also not quite.