Dressage-News

Aug. 28, 2019

A graphically appealing feature to highlight performances at the European Championships of some of the world’s top dressage combinations has been created by Black Horse One, a pioneer in implementing high tech to enhance presentation of the Olympic sport.

The new feature uses data of every movement judged by the seven-member ground jury for the 69 horses and riders in the Grand Prix that decided team medals, the 30 in the Grand Prix Special for individual medals and 15 in the Grand Prix Freestyle at Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Black Horse One software programs were able to produce statistics to generate facts highlighting the achievements of riders and horses that in collaboration with dressage-news.com that provided photographs made for visually appealing graphics.

The first three of more than a dozen graphics created by Black Horse One can be seen here.

Based in Munich, Germany Black Horse worked with SAP, the global software giant, to create Spectator Judging that is now used by shows around the world for fans to become involved by awarding their own scores for rides that are displayed along with the results from the ground jury.

The partnership with SAP, with their knowledge and systems for live data analytics, opens up greater potential to do more to increase awareness of dressage not only to current fans but to a wider audience.

eDressage was a breakthrough software innovation by Black Horse One that for the past 18 months has been used to collect marks solely by computers–no paper–and to display the results before horse and rider combinations have left the arena, adding a level of excitement not previously available. The world’s most prestigious dressage shows have adopted the system.

The program to measure degrees of difficulty of specified movements in Grand Prix musical performances was also created by Black Horse in conjunction with foremost dressage judges and the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) to make judging more transparent. It has the additional goal of providing commentators with the potential to provide more excitement and anticipation in their presentations, much like that utilized with enormous success in the Olympic sports of gymnastics and ice skating, both jury sports like dressage.

“If done right,” said Daniel Göhlen, founder of Black Horse, “statistics can generate interesting facts which enable story telling around achievements and athletes. These should associate lasting achievements with the athletes and give the people more reason to follow them and stay on the edge of their seats when these athletes are performing.

“We want to extend the software landscape around the core products eDressage and Spectator Judging to facilitate intelligent algorithms and sensible analytics to identify exciting facts in real time. Commentary and media should be able to use our system to tell their listeners and readers the stories that are even more interesting and recognizable if they are highlighted with non-obvious facts. Our friends from EquiRatings are doing this for eventing already and showed that there is huge potential.”

Kenneth J. Braddick, founder of dressage-news.com based in Wellington, Florida, said the collaboration with Black Horse One fulfilled a primary goal of the news source–to provide information in ways that are easily understood by as many people as possible.

“This is is all the more vital for dressage, a passion pursued by some of the world’s most dedicated and amazingly talented equestrians but whose skills after more than a century of participation in the Olympics is not always appreciated by a fan base wider than its most devoted followers,” he said. “We’re proud to be associated with Black Horse One opening up new channels of communication utilizing the latest software tools to appeal to fans of all ages–those who simply want facts to those who appreciate new forms of presentation.”

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