New Freestyle Scoring System for Competition and Spectator Judging App Available

Press Release | Dressage – The 2017 Adequan® Global Dressage Festival (AGDF) kicked off its season at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center (PBIEC), in Wellington, FL, last week and runs through March 25. Making its AGDF debut was the FEI’s new Degree of Difficulty (DoD) Freestyle Judging System, accompanied by a new spectator judging app.

AGDF Director of Sport Thomas Baur is excited to introduce these two new, innovative technologies during the circuit. „I think it’s a good step forward, to make the subjective freestyle a bit more objective,“ he said. „We will continue through the season in the CDI-Ws with it, to get ready for Omaha and the FEI World Cup Final.“

The technology was first thought of with the help of FEI 5* judge Katrina Wüst of Germany and created by software developer and German national judge, Daniel Göhlen.

The FEI’s new Freestyle Scoring Suite asks riders to create and submit floor plans ahead of time with the Floorplan Creator. The Suite also has a second element, Judge Assistant, which displays the floor plans for the judges and allows them to score the freestyles.

The scoring is regulated through the FEI, and now riders compete and work to achieve high freestyle scores through challenging choreography. The software calculates the degree of difficulty executed, which will then be awarded to the over-all degree of difficulty mark that belongs to the individual freestyle.

„It can be compared to ice skating. The riders know beforehand what degree of difficulty score they might get. The degree of difficulty is highly dependent on the technical execution,“ said Göhlen.

Floorplan Creator displays elements including combination, difficult transitions, particle, and „joker“ (which allows the rider to repeat a particular movement if they are in need of a re-do).The software requires the judge to communicate with the scribe, asking the judge to accept or reject the degree of difficulty awarded to each movement.

To actively incorporate the audience into the world of dressage tests, Göhlen also developed the Spectator Judging app. The app allows spectators to actively participate by giving them three different live scoring options.

Göhlen noted his inspiration for the creation of the app, „I always looked at these performances and thought, ‚What would I give? What marks would I choose?‘ I thought it would be fun to try it out, to try judging in that way.“

Each app user is able to give a score movement by movement, in a simplified manner, or create an overall score at the end of the ride. The spectators are then able to compare their scores directly to the scores given by the judges.