Cross-Country Courses - Part III

One aspect of course design that John Williams stresses as being extremely important is the footing of the track. He points out that it is important for the 100th horse to go to have footing as good as that of the first horse to go around. He points out the maintenance and protection given to polo fields a nd steeplechase courses and recommends if at all possible that galloping tracks be protected from other traffic. He cites recent examples of top riders withdrawing horses from competition due to concerns over footing. Year round maintenance is a very important goal to work toward, one that the designer feels has been overlooked in the past.

He then continued, "Then we start picking out where the start is going to be. Where the finish is going to be. The highlights of the course- the water, coffin, sunken road, ditches. There are no written rules as to what has to be in a course. People would be awfully disappointed at advanced, though, if a course was missing the highlights. You can have a course that does not have a coffin but then you should have a sunken road. You really don't want to have an upper level course without a water jump. It's just not right. But there are no written rules. There are rules about the minimum and maximum number of obstacles, the minimum and maximum distances and obviously about the size of the obstacles.

"So if I've seen a site that I think would be great for the water, for ex ample, I want to make sure I can fit it in. If there is only going to be one water, then I want it to be in the middle third of the course. Not too early and not too late. Sometimes there are two or even three waters, in which case they can fall just about anywhere any time after about the fourth or fifth fence but usually not closer than the third or fourth from home. Other things to keep in mind: 'OK. I've got a spot for the water and it works for getting spectators to it and just on the other side there's a spot for a sunken road and spectators can watch both. That's a bonus.' I'd like to be able to have three or even four of the highlights of the course be visible from one vantage point, especially if it's an upper level competition or in a community where there is value in getting its members interested in coming out and seeing the sport. If you're in an area that could potentially draw several thousand spectators, have some corporate sponsorship, whether it's in the form of prize money or the building of fences, then definitely take spectators into consideration.

"I've walked around and at some point I've taken a measuring wheel and gotten an idea as to whether or not I'm in the ballpark of the range of distance I need. As I said, sometimes you'll see a piece of land that you would like to use some interesting feature and put some jumps on it. Some pieces of land have too much to offer. You've got to be able to not use some of the features." At this point we asked John Williams if the type of terrain affects a designer's choice of obstacles in relation to how taxing the course will be on the horses asked to go over it. "At a horse trial we are not worried about whether a horse is fit enough. The nature of a piece of land will dictate quite a bit the type of fences'- the size, the shape. However, it doesn't matter how hilly it is or how flat it is. If it's an intermediate course the fences need to be intermediate questions. You fit in the range that the rulebook allows. If it's early in the season maybe you'll keep the distance in towards the bottom end that's allowed and the jumping efforts toward the bottom but not necessarily.

"It's easy to have a course to have too many things to offer, particularly in New England, so you have to restrain yourself. Then you might have someplace like Florida or somewhere that just happens to have a piece of flat ground. It's hard to create an interesting advanced course on a flat piece of ground that has nothing to offer. There you'd like to have at least a year to develop some interesting pieces of land. To bring in a bulldozer, move dirt and create interesting dips and rises and swales. Then come back eight or ten months later and put in the appropriate kinds of jumps."

According to Williams there is an entire accreditation system for licensing designers that falls under the domain of the AHSA and the FEI. Most designers currently working are also or have been riders themselves. This is not to say that a good designer has to be a rider or that every rider will be a good des igner.

John Williams has a background in furniture building and is a course builder as well as a designer. He talked at some length about the building of the obstacles.

"Some designers know very little about building. It would probably be easier for me to have somebody else build my courses if I knew nothing about building. It can be difficult for me to distance myself from that aspect and stay as a designer. As a builder I used to complain about designers who knew nothing about how to build things. I felt that was a law in the system. After all, an architect does know how to build a house. I felt that it was up to a designer to provide working drawings with suggested materials to be used for an obstacle. Some designers stay away from that. They will say, " I want it to be this size, this wide on this piece of ground and the shape of it needs to be such and such."

"The shape is a big part of this design thing. You have to have an inherent understanding of what the ground is doing to the horse's balance. The type of question you are about to ask the horse combined with the slope or lack of slope that the horse is galloping on dictates the shape of the fence. Some questions allow for the fence to be quite vertical and other questions demand for the fence to not be vertical at all. That's for a lot of people the more difficult thing about being a course designer. Every course should have as wide a variety of obstacles as possible."

We also asked John Williams to talk about schooling courses. What obstacle does he advise?

"For a schooling facility the story changes quite a bit. You definitely need some type of a water jump. It can be quite simple. You definitely need steps and a simple uphill and downhill fence. It would be great to have a mound with a simple log on top. Several sizes of ditches starting out quite small and all in the same vicinity so that you can work your way up the sizes without having to go from one end of the property to another. If it's always going to be a schooling facility and not for competition try to put everything that you need or want in the same ten acre field. That way for someone doing a clinic or lessons you can stand in one spot and see most of the course. People can come in and school their horses very conveniently. They don't have to travel over 400 acres of land. There's also a lot less maintenance- one field to mow, one area of your property to bring gravel to fix footing, etc. It also saves more of your property for other uses. "For a schooling area I'd be more tempted to use materials that are going to be around for a long time. Your water jump is your most permanent fixture. I also try to make sure when laying out a water jump that it is accessible from all sides. Be careful not to build it against a property line of a cliff or what have you. Also plan it around your water source. Some water is trucked in. Some is piped in; some jumps courses actually have wells drilled specifically for the water obstacles.

Williams explained that the footing can be a combination of several different materials, but if the jump is not being used for a length of time he advises keeping it empty to discourage the buildup of algae and silt which will make the footing slippery. A schooling jump on the other hand has to be kept full most of the time although it should be drained periodically for cleaning and maintenance.

To wrap things up Williams talked about the flow of a course. "A course should have a nice flow to it. It's not for a designer to try and trick a horse and rider. A course should be challenging but it isn't nice for a designer to go out of his way to put in for example a reverse camber. If there is a right hand slope it's not fair to ask the horse to make a right-handed turn on landing. You would rather have a left-handed turn." While the designer acknowledges that sometimes this situation might be necessary, it shouldn't be the norm.

After the competition has been run Williams looks for feedback on how the course rode, especially if he was not present at the competition, which may be the case for many designers due to the demands on their time. David Wisner is relatively new to design and building, however this owner of a small construction company has been studying course design and has worked on the Jackson's Hole Farm Training and Preliminary courses in Upperco, Maryland. Site of a spring horse trials, it is run by the Maryland Combined Training Association through the kindness of the family of the late Sheila Jackson, past MFH of the Greenspring Valley Hounds. Mrs. Jackson's daughters Sheila Jackson Brown and Cappy Jackson are both fine horsewomen. Ms. Jackson, a professional photographer, serves as the official event photographer. Mrs. Brown, a one time New England resident and current Greenspring MFH won the Preliminary in 1995. This year's trials, held the first weekend in May, saw New England competitors; Lelo Reeves of Massachusetts, Babette Lenna of Maine, and Alison Eastman of New Hampshire among the competitors in the Preliminary and Training levels. Jackson's Hole will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary next year.

According to David Wisner, as eventing becomes more popular safety is more and more of a concern, an opinion voiced by every person interviewed for this article. "Footing is a major concern and more attention is being paid to it. Some places are mixing sand or stone dust in to help things out. It's difficult. We had a horse trials this past weekend and the going was very hard, yet two weeks before we were worried that it was too wet." For Wisner the approach to a new or revised course is "will the obstacles fit the terrain, will they be safe and can they be built to the new standards? Sometimes a designer will ask me if I want sketches. Sometimes I will drive in stakes to help me visualize the obstacle." Another concern is the cost factor. Wisner says, "Virtually anything can be built. What you have to do is look at your budget. You can always have the materials brought in. What you want to do first, though, is to look at what materials are readily available. Does the property have a woods where you might be able to get dead trees? Is there a sawmill nearby? A lot of people are floored by what these jumps cost. By the time you take in insurance, payroll (unless you have volunteers) equipment rental, etc., an oxer can cost anywhere from four or five hundred dollars to a couple of thousand. A water jump, depending on the size, can cost two to twelve thousand dollars."

Internationally known rider and course designer David O'Connor served as a course adviser for the organizers at Jackson's Hole. Horsecity was given access to a video made of the session. Having walked the finished course prior to viewing the video it was interesting to compare the before and after appearance of the site. The optimal use of the natural terrain became very evident.

There is so much that goes into the design and build of a challenging, fun and safe cross-country course. The preceding merely scratches the surface but it is hoped that both competitors and spectators alike will have a greater appreciation for the behind the scenes professionals who make their sport available to them. *Some information on the history of organized eventing was taken from the USCTA Web site article written by Denny Emerson. It is used with his permission.

Denny Emerson: "If you're riding a green horse or a novice horse you're looking for something that isn't spooky. You want something inviting, good solid inviting ground lines; nothing too narrow, nothing too scary like off a corner, off a turn, tight turn. You want the horse to see what he's doing. Another thing is that you don't want something beside the fence that makes a horse shy away from a jump. It can be an innocuous looking fence but if it's right on a fence line where forty spectators are standing with umbrellas, the horse won't jump the fence, not because of the fence, but because of the umbrellas. As the fences get bigger you're going to assume that the horse has to answer much more technical questions, so then you're looking for the answer to the question for the horse. Do you do the corner; do you do the long way? Have you practiced the kind of things that you discover they're asking, or are you seeing it for the first time. You hope you're not seeing it for the first time and if you are then you haven't done your homework. This is a very general overview. When you've jumped a lot of courses you have a sense of what a horse can do. You have a sense without knowing why you know. For a less experienced rider it's a little trickier situation. While Philip Dutton and Bruce Davidson and those guys might not need to walk a course with someone, I think it always helps to have someone to bounce your ideas off of, especially if they know your horse.

Especially at Prelim and above you need a brave horse. Courage begins to be the defining quality. You can't tell a little bit 'til you get there. Some horses haven't done anything. With a hunter you can sometimes tell. One cardinal rule that riders should remember is don't jump up the neck. Don't throw your upper body. When you're coming into that fence you stay until the horse leaves the ground. That's where people get more stops and more falls than anything else. They get somewhere in front of the fence and they're not sure and they throw their body to make the horse go and everything falls to pieces.