Where to start? To the THF these are the most utterly incomprehensible of creatures with an epithetical language and system all of their own. They appear to have the uncanny knack of being able to know exactly what score each horse and rider will get before it enters the arena, and regardless of how it performs, in a marvellously conventional way – behaving rather like shoals of sardines off Southern Africa who move in synchronised patterns which are unthinking yet protective. The result is that to the THF trying to work out what marks a movement will get and constantly hoping against hope that the funded’s marks will improve, the future always guarantees disappointment. The futile sense of optimism that this time the marks will improve and that just this once the Funded may beat the “name” who shied twice, cantered on the wrong leg and left the arena on the corner is always there and always dashed (another 62% – ” a little tense” – for the Funded playing the mandatory 70%). It isn’t that all judges are blind (though some appear to display that tendency) – they are just pre-conditioned and nervous to be out of step. Of course it isn’t really like that. It just seems to be so to the ignorant THF.
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thehorsefunder 
Yes,funny how that seems to be the case over and over again. Regardless of country, we repeatedly see the very things you observed ,and despite “improved” judge training in this country and apparent increased transparency in mark-giving everywhere.Perhaps judges aren’t always quite the independant thinking individuals they’d like to think they are. How are things to ever actually improve?(And I have trained in the european system, and am a qualified dressage judge).In a subjective judging system, as this has to be, we need people strong enough to think independantly,and not succumb to peer pressure, of which there is plenty. On the other hand,there are some strong souls like that in the system, and sometimes there are things that those, without their wealth of knowledge and experience, do not see.