Riding meets artificial intelligence: dressage judges are supported

Dressage judges have a hard time keeping an overview of all the criteria, their tastes are different – and they influence a million-dollar business. Now the AI ​​comes along and the scene asks itself: Can it do better?

Since Heike Kemmer no longer gallops into the dressage arena with her horse, but increasingly distributes grades herself behind the judges’ table, the 2008 team Olympic champion has not only changed her perspective externally. “As a dressage judge you have to pay attention to an incredible number of things,” she says. “One blink of an eye and you’ve missed something.” For example, if the horse only makes 13 instead of 15 flying canter changes. If you as a judge forget to count, at the same time you make sure that the horse doesn’t throw its rump back and forth, but stays upright, and that the rider sits elegantly and as motionlessly as possible in the saddle, so that it looks as if everything is happening on its own (which of course it is). doesn’t) – he can start to sweat.