Mark Todd: Are natural fences now novel? [H&H VIP]

Ive really enjoyed two end-of-season events, both of which have been organised by the same families for a long time.

The Nolan family has run South of England for 40 years, doing great service to the sport. They continue to make improvements, and have good arenas for dressage and jumping, and an excellent cross-country course.

The Sturgis familys Dauntsey Park is another to have been going for a long time. I remember falling off Charisma at the final fence in the early 1980s when about to win the advanced!

When I walked the Dauntsey course I thought, great, its nice to have a track with lots of natural features hedges, ditches, banks, water crossings and a lovely, old-fashioned feel.

So I was somewhat surprised to hear a number of people grumbling.

I guess you always look at a course through the eyes of the horse you are sitting on, and I did have two very experienced rides this time, but last year I took a first-time intermediate there and thought it was fair.

The difficult fences did offer options to get horses round. Not all intermediate tracks can or should be easy ones, and I thought it encouraged horses to be bold and forward. The 1,000 first prize in the open intermediate was a great initiative and drew people to the competition. If you wanted to win it, you had to take the direct routes, which is right.

Im not sure why the bank didnt ride very well. Perhaps a ditch in front would help horses get up in the air?

But it does beg the question of course-design. Have we got so far away from natural obstacles that riders have forgotten how to ride them and horses arent trained to jump them? I understand that it is often more financially economical to use portable fences, particularly on a track which lacks natural undulations and features. However, boxes in the middle of fields arent cross-country as I think of it. Using the features the land offers helps slow people down without resorting to unnecessary twists and turns.

Courses ask the same old questions over and over again now the skinny fence in or out of water, the corner with a turn to a skinny, the use of brush on absolutely everything. And skinnies themselves: we are all used to them, so whats next? Do designers make them ever narrower and to be jumped on even more of an angle?

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Mark Todd: Are natural fences now novel? [H&H VIP]