ITPF Training System

A place for a rider to write down what they rode, see whether the work is paying off, and rehearse a full competition on paper. Everything in it is private to the person who recorded it.

1. What this is

Four things, and nothing else:

The points and time deductions follow the ITPF Tent Pegging Rules effective 1 July 2025, so a practice average and a competition average are measured the same way. That is the whole of the resemblance: nothing here is a competition result, and section 10 says exactly what that means.

2. Your account

1. Create an account from the sign-in page. You need a name, an email and a password; the country is optional.
2. It works immediately. Nobody approves it, because logging your own riding needs nobody's permission.
3. One account per email and one per phone number. The number is compared with everything but the digits removed, so "+962 79 123 4567" and "0962791234567" are the same number and cannot both register.

If you forget the password, ask for a link from the sign-in page. The link lasts an hour and works once. Setting a new password signs out every other session — which is the point, if somebody else had the old one.

3. The training log

1. Open "Training log" and start a session: the date, what you are working on, where, the horse and the ground.
2. Add each run as you ride it: the competition, the peg, what happened to the peg, and the time on the clock.
3. Every run has Edit and Delete beside it, and the session has Edit details. Deleting one run renumbers the rest, so the sheet still reads 1, 2, 3. A log nobody can correct stops being kept.

The horse is a name you type. There is no register of horses here, and writing a name does not register anything with anybody — it stays in your log.

Is it working?

Once there are six sessions to compare, the log says in one line whether recent work is better or worse than what came before, and draws every session as a bar. Below that the same runs are split by peg size and by competition.

• The split by peg size is the one to watch. The 4 cm peg is the hard one, and an average across both sizes hides whether you are getting better at it.
• With fewer than six sessions it says nothing rather than guessing. Four sessions is not a trend, and a system that calls it one is telling you something it does not know.

4. A report over a period

The log answers "what happened in that session". "Training report" answers the other question a rider actually asks: how have the last three months gone. Same log, same runs, same rules — the difference is that every figure is bounded by two dates.

1. Pick the last 30 days, 90 days or 12 months, or everything — or set your own two dates.
2. You get the headline figures for that period, the sessions as bars, and the same runs split by peg size and by competition. Every session is listed underneath, and opening one takes you to it in the log.

5. Competition simulation

A training session is one afternoon. A competition is three days, ten competitions and eighteen runs, and riding it in your head is not the same as riding it on paper.

• Day 1 is the lance: Individual Lance on a 6 cm peg, Pair Lance on 6 then 4, Team Lance on 6 then 4 then 4. Day 2 repeats it with the sword. Day 3 is rings, lemons and the four relay runs. Six runs a day, eighteen in all — Appendix 9.
• Each row saves on its own. Fill in a whole day and save the rows one at a time — saving one never clears what you have typed into the others.

6. My students

Keeping a roster of other riders and logging training for them needs a trainer role. Apply from "My roles"; the ITPF office grants it with a level. Nobody awards themselves a qualification, and your own riding needs no approval at all.

A student does not need an account — a coach should not be blocked from logging a beginner's work because that beginner has not signed up. But the difference matters: when a student has an account, the session is owned by them, so it lands in their own private log as well as yours. When they do not, you own it, and they see nothing until they sign up and you link them.

7. Posting a card

Three things can be shared and nothing else: one training session, a report over a period, and a simulation. Each has a Share button on its own page, and each makes a picture you can post — Story for the full height of a phone screen, or Post for the 4:5 shape.

• WhatsApp on a phone takes the picture straight from here. On a computer it cannot, so the picture is saved to your downloads and WhatsApp opens with the words ready — attach the saved picture yourself.
• Instagram takes no picture from a web page at all, on any device. "Save for Instagram" saves it to your photos; then open Instagram and post it from there.

Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored. The picture is drawn on your own device from the figures already on the screen in front of you — and the message that travels with it carries no link, because the log it came from is private.

8. How points are worked out

The time allowed is 6.40 seconds in the individual classes, 7.00 in pairs, teams and the overhead classes, and 10.00 in the relays (Art. 144.1). Half a point comes off for every second over, or part of a second: 0.90 seconds over costs 0.50, not 0.45 (Art. 144.9). A run that scored nothing loses nothing to the clock (Art. 144.2).

9. Hosting a competition

A National Federation account hosts competitions for its own country. It is created by the ITPF office and tied to one federation — that tie is the whole of its authority, and it may never act for another country. A rider account cannot host, and the Events page tells them so rather than half-working.

1. Open "Events" and fill in the name, the venue and the first day. Three days follow it: the programme is ten competitions over three days, so a fourth would hold nothing and a second would leave competitions with nowhere to go.
2. Set the day entries close, and who to contact. The deadline has to fall before the first day, and the contact is so questions from other federations reach you rather than the ITPF office.
3. It is created as a draft. Only you can see it, and you can change anything on it.
4. Fill in the ITPF application on the second tab. It is the official event application form — what kind of event it is under Article 105, the city, how many horses, which countries you expect, and whether you are providing beds, meals and transport. A competition cannot be sent for sanction until those are answered, and the page names the ones still missing rather than hiding the button.
5. Name the officials on the third tab — the Ground Jury, the Veterinary Committee and the Appeal Committee, items 11 to 13 of the form. You pick them from the ITPF register and cannot type a name, and the ITPF approves them separately from the competition itself.
6. Send it to the ITPF for sanction. While the office is reading it, it is locked — a document that changes underneath the reviewer is not under review.
7. The ITPF office never touches what you have written. It reads the application, and either sanctions it or sends it back with a reason. If a field is wrong it says which — it does not correct it for you.
8. The office either sanctions it, after which every federation can see it, or sends it back with a note saying what to fix. A returned competition is a draft again, with the note on it, so you correct what was named and send it once more. A sanction given by mistake can be withdrawn, which puts the competition back in the ITPF queue and hides it from other federations again.

You see every sanctioned competition wherever it is held, and your own at every stage. Another federation's draft is not on your list at all — it is not hidden from you by the page, it is simply not in what the page was given.

What kind of event it is

Article 105 keeps two lists, and they do different things. Article 105.2 names the ITPF authorized events — the World Cup, its qualifier, and the Tent Pegging Games — and you pick exactly one, because it decides the programme: the first two ride the ten competitions of Appendix 9 and the Games ride Appendix 10, which is another programme altogether.

Article 105.3 names eleven championship categories — Women's, Under 21, Under 16, Masters', Military, Universities, Traditional, Beach, Club, Invitational and Individual — and a host may apply for more than one. They are drawn on the form and every one of them is switched off, as is the Tent Pegging Games. That is deliberate and it is not a placeholder: each of those changes the programme, and the Individual championship takes no pairs, teams or relays at all. Offering them before the programme exists would let a federation apply for a competition this system could not then run. They open when the programme does.

The official application form lists the same thirteen boxes and does not mention the Tent Pegging Games at all, which is a useful check that this is being read the way the ITPF wrote it.

Before the first day

The competition page counts back from your first day and shows the five dates Article 107 fixes: the Notice of Event to the other federations at 100 days, their expressions of interest ten days later, the ITPF's authorized invitations ten days after that, their acceptances ten days after that, and the final programme at 30 days. None of it is stored — move the first day and every line moves with it. The three ten-day steps assume the notice goes out on the last day the article allows; send it earlier and the whole chain has more room.

A date shown as passed is not an error. It is a fact worth seeing on the page rather than discovering later.

When a competition cannot be held

A sanctioned competition is not yours to call off. Article 110 calls what you do instead submitting an apology to the ITPF: you say why it cannot be held, the office decides, and until it does the competition stands and the federations planning around it see no change. The office can refuse, in which case it goes ahead and you are told why, and you may apply again.

The ITPF office can also cancel a competition outright, without an apology having been made. That is a different act — withdrawing an authorization rather than accepting an apology — and Article 110.1.1 does not follow from it. Either way a written reason is required, and either way the competition stays on every federation's list marked cancelled. It is not removed: a federation that booked flights around it has to be able to find out what happened to it.

Naming the jury

Every rule in Chapter 5 turns on three things about a person: their grade, their country and whether they have passed a particular course. A name typed into a box carries none of them, so a federation picks officials from the ITPF register and cannot type one. There are eleven Ground Jury seats, three on the Veterinary Committee, and three to five on the Appeal Committee.

Chapter 5 warns; it does not refuse. Article 113.1 says the ITPF "will evaluate the recommendations from the hosting NF for the judges who will be appointed", and Articles 115.1 and 116.1 say the same of the appeal committee and the veterinarians. The evaluation is the ITPF's to make, so a system that refused your recommendation outright would be taking it from them. You name whoever you judge right; anything the rules argue against travels with the name to the office, which approves it or sends it back. These are what the screen tells you, not what it stops you doing:

The rule book writes the top grade both ways — "Golden Badge" in Article 111.1.1 and "Gold Badge" in Article 113.2.1 — and a register kept by hand writes it several more. They are one grade and are stored as one, however they arrive, or the chairperson check would be a spelling test.

Articles 113.1, 115.1 and 116.1 each have the ITPF evaluating the hosting federation's recommendations and issuing a formal letter with the approved names. So the names have their own approval, separate from the competition's sanction, and the ITPF office can send them back naming the seat that has to change. The office can help a federation fill the seats, but cannot put the names forward on its behalf — a body does not evaluate its own recommendation.

The programme

You do not fill this in. Article 105.4 calls Appendix 9 "the SET program", so the programme follows from what kind of event you said this is: eighteen runs over three days for the World Cup and its qualifier, sixteen over two for the Tent Pegging Games. Each day shows the competitions, their peg sizes and the time Article 144.1 allows each one — 6.40 seconds for the individual classes, 7.00 for pairs, teams and the overhead competitions, 10.00 for the relays.

It is worked out every time it is shown and stored nowhere. Two stored copies would drift, and the day somebody edited one the event would be riding a programme the rule book does not describe.

If the event ends in a tie, Appendix 9 names one extra run on a 2.5 cm peg — Team Lance for teams and Individual Lance for individuals — and a different pair for each day: the swords on day two, Relay Lance and Rings and Peg on day three. The screen says which, and nothing more: the rule book says "ride-out if necessary", and necessary is the Ground Jury's judgement, not a program's.

Your athletes, and your horses

Athletes and horses belong to the federation that enters them, so the register on "Athletes and horses" is yours and nobody writes into it — not another country, and not the ITPF office. It is not capped at five either: Article 129.1's five is the size of a team at one competition, and choosing five out of your roster is the entry.

A date of birth is the one thing an athlete cannot be without, because Article 130 is arithmetic on two dates and nothing else — every minimum age is measured on the first day of the competition and the two maximums on the last. So the categories an athlete fits are worked out for a chosen competition rather than in the abstract, and the picker at the top of the list is what chooses it.

Nothing on the horse page refuses a horse. A passport with fewer than ten events, a missing ITPF passport number, no owner recorded — each is stated with the article that asks for it and none of them stops anything, because Article 121.2 gives that decision to the Chairpersons of the Ground Jury and the Veterinary Committee and calls it final.

The start list

One sheet to a competition, and it is worked out rather than kept: the order the countries drew, the four names the coach declared, the track each was entered into and the horse each drew, joined together every time it is opened. Nothing on it is typed here, because every part of it was written down by somebody the rules put in charge of writing it.

The order is the one the countries drew — Article 123.10.1 — and it is deliberately not the alphabet, so the sheet may well open with a country that comes last in a list of names. A country that has not declared its four is on the sheet all the same, saying so, because a gap the Ground Jury can see is worth more than a country quietly missing from the page.

The draw of horses

The draw happens in the arena and this system does not do it. Article 123.5 puts it at least twenty-four hours before the first competition, Article 123.6 in front of the managers or coaches, the athletes, the Chairpersons of the Ground Jury and the Veterinary Committee and the Technical Delegate, and Article 123.7 under their authority, with the horses standing there wearing their own bridles. A computer shuffling numbers would be replacing all of that rather than recording it. The Draw tab is the sheet you fill in afterwards.

Three boxes, in the order Article 123 puts them. First the number painted on each horse — Article 123.8, and it is how that horse is called for the rest of the competition. Then the competing order each country drew: the host draws first (123.10.1.1) and the rest walk up alphabetically (123.10.1.2), and the number each pulls out decides both the order it rides in and the order it draws horses in. Then the horse each rider drew — one horse for one team member at a time, until the team has its five (123.10.2.2).

The host writes it down and everybody reads it. Article 123.9 makes the organizing committee responsible for providing everything the procedure needs, so the result is the competition's own record rather than a document each country writes half of. The page refuses only what could not have happened in the arena: one number on two horses, one horse under two riders, a horse another country already drew, a horse nobody arranged. It refuses nothing else, because the draw was held by people the rules put in authority over it.

Entering a team

The ITPF issues the Authorized Invitation — Article 107.5 — and a National Federation has ten calendar days to accept or decline it, which is Article 107.6. Silence after those ten days is neither: the page reads it as no answer, because a country that never replied is not a country that said no. Then the federation names its team on the Athletes tab of the competition: up to five athletes and a coach, and one more person as a manager if it wants — Article 108.2.

Confirming the registration is a separate press, and only the National Federation may make it. Article 109.1.1 makes a confirmed registration the thing that binds: a country that fails to show up after sending one owes the hosting federation 2,500 US Dollars, paid through the ITPF. The system states that figure and settles nothing — the same way it states Article 110.1.1's five thousand and settles nothing there either.

Before each competition

Article 128.3 has the manager or the coach declare four names, and only four, to the Ground Jury before a competition starts — Article 127.3.1 puts exactly four of the five on the course. The number beside each name is the track they ride, and Article 128.4 holds them to it: changing tracks without telling the Ground Jury is a disqualification and zero for that run.

The tracks are numbered one to four, number one on the right of the course — Article 119.3 — and how many are opened depends on the competition: one for each individual athlete, two for each pair, four for a team (Article 141.3). A relay is the exception: all four ride one track behind each other, so the number beside a name is their place in the running order and not a track at all.

When somebody is hurt

A substitution in the middle of a competition has exactly two reasons — injured, ill — and no third: Article 127.1 for an athlete and Article 122.1 for a horse. The substitute is the team's own reserve and nobody else (127.2), and the reserve may ride either the withdrawn athlete's horse or the team's reserve horse, whichever they prefer (127.2.2).

The one who is withdrawn takes part in no other competition that day, and comes back the next once a doctor certifies the cause has gone — Article 127.2.1, and Article 122.2.1 word for word for a horse, with the vet in the doctor's place. A horse that comes back does not rejoin its team: Article 122.4 sends it to the event's spare pool, because the team drew another one in its place.

None of the day-long bars stops you. The screen says which article you are passing and records who passed it, because Articles 127.2.1 and 122.2.1 give nobody the power to allow it — writing something down does not make it lawful, and the difference is worth keeping visible.

Loading a list from a spreadsheet

Beside each form there is a template to download. Fill it in from your spreadsheet, save it as CSV, and send it back. The athlete columns are name, date of birth, back number, country, gender and ITPF id, and only the first two are needed; the horse columns are name, passport, year of birth, sex, owner, events and country, and only the name is needed. A field holding a comma goes in quotation marks, and then a name like "Al-Zoubi, Ahmad" is read whole.

It writes nothing when you send it. It shows you every row with what it read and what it refused, and only the second press saves. The file itself is never kept: it is read, turned into rows, and gone when the page answers.

Scoring a run

One screen to a run, in the order the field rides it. Run one goes down the course for everybody before run two starts, so the screen is filled in the order the competition happens in rather than one country at a time. Each block is one unit — one athlete in an individual competition, two in a pair, four in a team or a relay — with what each rider scored, one time for the whole unit, and the articles that took a run away where any did.

The deduction for time is the part most easily got wrong, and it lands in two different places. In an individual competition the athlete is the unit, so Article 142.6 takes it off the athlete. In a pair, team or relay Article 142.4 leaves every rider their own object points untouched and Article 142.5 takes the deduction off the unit's total for that run — so a team that is half a second late loses half a point as a team, and not half a point four times over.

Half a point for every second over, or part of a second — Article 144.9, so one hundredth of a second over the time costs exactly what ninety-nine hundredths cost. A run that scored nothing is never penalised for the clock however late it was (Article 144.2). A clock that failed scores the run with no deduction at all and gives no rerun (Article 144.6). Where there is no electronic timing, Article 144.5 puts two timekeepers on the course and Article 144.7 makes the average of both the official time — so one reading on its own is not a time yet, and the screen says so rather than halving it.

The Ground Jury may lengthen or shorten the time allowed for a run — Article 144.3 — for one of the four reasons Article 144.4 lists and no other: the conditions of the track, the breed of the horses, their ability, and the safety of athletes and horses. It is stored against that run, so a run already scored under seven seconds stays judged against seven when the next one is given eight.

The Result Card

Four cards: one at the end of each day and one after the eighteenth run, which is where Appendix 9 puts the award ceremonies. Each holds the same three things — the best team, the best athlete, and who came first, second and third in each competition of that day — and the final one holds them for the whole event.

A team total is its athletes' totals added together — Article 105.10 says so in as many words, and it matters because in an individual competition four riders from one country each have a run of their own. So one figure produces everything on the card: what an athlete scored in a run, which is their object points less their own time deduction in an individual competition and less nothing in a pair, team or relay.

When two are level

The card shows them sharing the place — two on 17.50 are both first and the next is third — because that is what a tie is until it is settled. Article 145 settles it with one additional run and no more than one, the same competition on a 2.5 cm peg. Which competition depends on the day: lance on day one, sword on day two, and on day three rings and peg for an athlete and relay lance for a team. For the event itself both are ridden on the last day, Individual Lance and Team Lance.

If the additional run leaves them level on objects, the time of it separates them. If nobody scored on objects at all, the time of the last run before it in which they did score is used instead — and so it is if they are level on both. The card prints which of those four rules separated each pair, so a placing can be argued about under Appendix 11 rather than merely accepted.

Only the people who were tied ride it. Article 145.1.1 permits one additional run to determine the winner, not a second running of the competition, so the sheet for it holds three riders where three were level and not the whole field.

Signing the card

Article 142.2 has the Result Card signed by all the members of the Ground Jury — eleven people at a full event. The card is printed with a ruled line against each of their names, it is signed on paper, and the Electronic Judge or the Chairperson then ticks each name off in the system.

The medals follow Appendix 9: seven to each of the first three teams — five athletes, the coach and the manager, all named from the entry — and three more, gold, silver and bronze, for the best athletes of the day.

Signing in as a judge

A judge is not a federation and has no list of events of their own. The seats they hold are their list: "My judging" in the menu shows every competition they are seated at, which seat they hold, what that seat lets them record and the article that says so, with a link into each day's competitions.

They read the competition, the officials, the athletes, the horses, the draw and the start list — a Course Judge needs to know who is coming down the track, and none of those is private. They change none of it. The only thing a judge writes is what their seat covers, on the score sheet and the Result Card.

Who may write what

Two seats, and no others: the Electronic Judge, who operates the electronic equipment under Article 113.2.3, and the Chairperson of the Ground Jury, who checks all scores and time penalties under Article 142.1 and is the Ground Jury's voice on amending a time allowed under Article 144.3. Everybody else on the course calls out what they saw and these two write it down — the Timekeeping Judge still records the time under Article 144.8 and the Course Judges still judge the objects under Article 143, in the arena, where those articles put them.

What stays yours after the sanction

A sanctioned competition is not finished. How many horses you can put on the ground, who pays for the beds, what meals there are, whether there is transport, which countries you expect — those go on settling right up to the first day, and Article 107.7 wants a final programme thirty days before it. So the ITPF application stays open to you after the sanction, and so does the type of event.

The name, the venue and the dates do not. Other federations booked flights and stabling around those, and a host who could move them after the fact could move them out from under somebody already travelling. If one of those is wrong, the ITPF office changes it.

Who fills the form in, and who only reads it

Three parties, and the lines between them are the whole of it. Your federation fills the forms in. So does an organizing committee you have recognised — Article 103.5 makes that recognition yours to give, so you appoint one on your own page and the ITPF office has no part in it. And the ITPF office reads, sanctions, sends back with a reason, and changes nothing.

The translate button

Names are stored twice, in English and in Arabic, and the button beside the Arabic field fills it from the English one. It is the only part of this system that talks to anything outside the machine it runs on, so it is worth knowing two things about it.

• What you type is sent to the translation service that is configured. That is fine for a competition name and a venue, and it is why the button exists on these fields and nowhere near a training log.
• If the service hands your text back unchanged — which is what happens to a name it does not know — the button says so, rather than dropping English into the Arabic field where it would look translated.
• What comes back is a draft. A machine gets a venue right and gets a federation's own name for itself wrong. Read what landed in the field before you save.

10. What this does not do

Saying so plainly matters more than the list of what it does, because the gap is where a system like this could mislead somebody.

• A competition can be run from end to end here — entered, declared, drawn, started, scored, tied, settled and signed — and the arithmetic agrees with a real ITPF result card row for row. What is still missing is around the edges: nothing records the award ceremonies Article 106 describes, and no event has been run through the Tent Pegging Games programme of Appendix 10.
• A score recorded here has no standing of its own. The Chairperson's check under Article 142.1 is recorded as a fact about a run, not as an approval this system enforces — it does not lock the run, because Article 142.3 gives the benefit of the doubt to the athlete and a sheet that refused a correction would be taking that away at the moment it matters most.
• It publishes nothing. There is no public page, no ranking and no rider profile. The only pages that need no sign-in are creating an account, asking for a password link, choosing a new password, and this manual.
• Nobody reads your training log unless you share it, and only you can. Your federation and the ITPF office see nothing at all until you turn sharing on from your own Overview, and turning it off again takes one click. Neither of them can turn it on for you — a federation that tries changes nothing.
• And what you share is the report, not the log: how many sessions and runs, your averages, your carry rate, the split by peg size and competition. Your session titles and anything you wrote about a session are never read, by anybody.
• Being able to stop an account is still not the same as being able to read what is inside it. The ITPF office creates accounts, suspends them and hands over password links; it reads a training report only where the rider has shared one.