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AF1: Malaysia to reintroduce Grading System
Sunday, April 1st, 2007
After years of grading chaos, Malaysia is to reintroduce a new and improved grading system for all equestrian disciplines.
Every system has to restart somewhere, so the Malaysian Grade Master (MGM) Tengku Narzoff, will be tabulating results from 2002 onwards – just the last five seasons.
Naturally even this is too much work for this MGM, especially as the Federation has not kept results. Ever. Therefore MGM is asking all owners and riders to send in all competition results of their horses in the last five years. This would save MGM a lot of searching through Equestrian.Com.My’s archives.
Essential to the new grading system is the value of your horse. Owners/riders are to inform the Graders of how much your horse cost. This will determine a registrant’s new grade. The more money the owner has paid, the lower the class the new horse starts in. This way the horse can “win its way up.” Why, with an honest owner, in a few years the horse might even be competing at the same level it was chosen from in the German Bundeschampionate.
Unlike the old inflexible system that required horses to be promoted after they reached a certain threshold in points, the new system allows the horse to continue competing in “open classes.” No points are gained in open points classes, and horses can compete in any grade of open points classes from show to show. This will allow horses to move from grade to grade at will, or carry on in the same grade or even lower. This will enable the horse to carry on winning for years. Admittedly this part of the system already seems familiar.
All horse values must be submitted in Euros, even if you purchased your horse in Malaysia. This is to reflect Malaysia’s most popular horse purchasing destination. “If you don’t buy a warmblood horse from Europe, you aren’t up keeping up with the Dato’ next door.”
All horses must have a value added in the declaration to MGM. Arbitrary values such as “priceless” will incur a penalty, charged to your Mastercard. Conversely, trainers are reminded that if they are making the value declaration on behalf of the owner, that “Useless-piece-of-****” is not an appropriate value.
Please also tell the MGM if one of your horses is retired or dead. There have been instances in the past of horses heading heavenly grades.
Certain names have been deemed unsuitable for new registrations. “Mike Hunt”, for example, is no way to describe your new mare. “Fido” and “Alpo” are also disallowed.
Please do not use confusing names like Laksamana I and Lasksamana II. If you have to have another Laksamana, please shorten the new one’s name to something like Laksa. Better still, add a pronoun to it, to make it Penang Laksa. That would give it a distinctive Malaysian flavour.
