Overview
For a course-based discipline, the course is the competition. Until now that meant a whiteboard in the secretary's caravan, a photo of it in a Facebook group, and a designer who could only hope the club still owned enough ground poles.
The Course Designer turns that into something the whole committee can work from. You build your club's obstacles once, place them into a course, say what each division has to do with them, and Horsify checks the result against your rulebook before anyone can publish it. Riders then see their own course sheet — the version for the class they entered, not somebody else's.
The rule that makes it work: the obstacle and the ride are separate things. Your club owns one Wooden Bridge. A course places it once. Novice walks across it and Intermediate halts on it. You never copy a course per division, and you never enter the same obstacle twice.
Who this is for: Course designers, event organisers and committee members running Extreme Cowboy Racing (with Working Equitation, Horse Agility, Trail, TREC and Show Jumping to follow).
Key Features
- 🪵 A reusable obstacle library — build the Wooden Bridge once, use it at every event, for years
- 🧭 One course, every division — Novice and Intermediate ride the same course; the differences live on the course, not in a duplicate of it
- 🎚️ Per-division execution — different instructions, difficulty, gait, time limit or height for each division on the same obstacle
- 📏 Rules as data, not opinion — obstacle counts, difficulty caps and required detail come from a versioned ruleset you can see
- 🚦 Validation before publication — errors block, warnings block until someone with authority acknowledges them, recommendations just advise
- ✅ A safety checklist that gets signed — who checked the footing, and when
- ✍️ An approval chain — designer, judge, technical official, organiser
- 🧰 Equipment reality check — what the course needs, against what your venue actually holds
- 🖨️ Five printables — rider sheet, judge sheet, setup sheet, equipment list, safety checklist
- 📱 A rider view that knows their class — entrants see their division's course on their phone
- 🕓 Post-publication edits are audited — every change after publication is recorded with old and new values
How It Fits Together
Five things, in order:
- Your obstacle library — the physical things your club owns. Built once, reused forever.
- A ruleset — the rulebook the course is designed and validated under. Horsify ships one for Extreme Cowboy Racing.
- A course — an ordered sequence of obstacles for one event, mapped to the classes that ride it.
- Variations — what each division does with each obstacle.
- Validation, sign-off and publication — the gate between "saved" and "riders can see it".
Saving is not readiness. A course only reaches riders when it passes validation, collects its sign-offs, and is explicitly published.
Before You Start
- You must be an organiser, organiser admin, organiser contributor or admin of the club running the event.
- The event needs competition classes already set up — a division is only real once it points at a class riders can enter. If you haven't added classes yet, do that first on the event's Competition Classes page.
- Your event's discipline should be one the course engine has a ruleset for. Extreme Cowboy Racing ships with the EXCA 2026.1 ruleset built in.
Finding the Course Designer
There are three ways in, all landing on the same page:
- From the event's Competition Classes page, click Course Designer in the top right.
- From the event page's organiser tools, choose Courses & Obstacles.
- Or go straight to
/organiser/events/{eventId}/courses.
Stage 1: Build Your Obstacle Library
Everything starts here. The library is your club's list of physical obstacles — independent of any one course, any one event, or any one division.
From the Courses page, click Obstacle library.
Each card shows the obstacle's category, the hardest rating your club will set it at, and how often it has been used — including which event used it last. That usage history is what stops you building the same course three years running.
Adding an obstacle
Click New obstacle and fill in what the setup crew will need on the day. Edit on an existing card opens the same form — here it is with a wooden bridge already in it.
| Field | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Name | What everyone calls it — "Wooden Bridge", "Rope Gate" |
| Category | Picked from your discipline's catalogue (gate, bridge, water, drag, jump…). Some divisions ban certain categories, and validation enforces that |
| Max difficulty (1–5) | The hardest this obstacle can sensibly be set at. Rating a course variation above it raises a warning |
| Description | What the obstacle is |
| Dimensions | Length, width and height of the thing as built — not what a course requires of it |
| Setup instructions | How the crew builds it. This is what the printed setup sheet carries |
| Safety requirements | What the crew must check. "Check for protruding nails; breakaway ties only" |
| Equipment needed | Named items and quantities — "Ground pole × 4". This is what the equipment check measures your venue against |
| Photos | Pictures of it built correctly. Riders see these on their course sheet |
Two things worth getting right:
- Equipment names must match your venue's inventory to be counted. Matching is case-insensitive, but "Ground pole" and "Ground poles" are two different items as far as the check is concerned.
- Deleting an obstacle that is in use doesn't delete it. Horsify deactivates it instead, so the historical courses that used it stay intact. It disappears from the pickers; it stays in the record.
Venue equipment
Below the library is your venue's equipment inventory — what you actually own, and how many.
Add items here and course validation will tell you when a course asks for more ground poles than you own. If you record no inventory at all, the equipment check stays silent rather than inventing a shortfall — so an empty list never blocks you.
Stage 2: Create a Course
Back on the Courses page, you'll see every course for this event with its current status.
Click New course.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Course name | "Saturday Main Course", "Sunday Speed Round" |
| Discipline | Determines the terminology and which fields appear — Extreme Cowboy says "Obstacle", Show Jumping says "Fence" |
| Ruleset | The rulebook this course is designed under. Horsify's system rulesets are available to every club; a club can also hold its own |
| Divisions and their classes | Tick the divisions this course runs for, and map each to the competition class that is that division at your event |
The class mapping is the load-bearing bit. It's how a rider's entry finds their course: entry → class → division → course. A division with no class mapped is a validation error, because nobody can ever ride it.
A new course starts as a Draft, with a Start marker, a Finish marker, and a copy of the ruleset's safety checklist ready to work through.
The ruleset a course is created under is permanent. Publishing a new version of a ruleset never changes a course that already exists — historical courses, and the results from them, keep the rules they were designed under.
Stage 3: Place Your Obstacles
Open the course to reach the designer. The left column is the ride sequence.
- Add an obstacle by picking it from your library and clicking Add. It slots in just before the Finish marker, so the sequence stays sensible without you reordering anything.
- Reorder with the up/down arrows. Numbering follows the sequence.
- Edit an obstacle's placement to set the instructions and difficulty that apply to every division unless a variation says otherwise.
- Remove takes it out of this course. Your library keeps it.
Set the base instructions and rating here, then only override the divisions that genuinely differ. That's less to maintain and less to get wrong.
Start and Finish are elements too. Exactly one of each is required, and they don't count towards a division's obstacle count.
Stage 4: Say What Each Division Does
This is the heart of the feature. The right-hand Division variations panel has a tab per division.
For each obstacle, per division:
| Setting | Effect |
|---|---|
| Included | Untick to take the obstacle out of this division's route entirely. The other divisions still ride it |
| Difficulty | This division's rating. Blank inherits the placement's base rating |
| Instructions | What this division is asked to do. Blank inherits the base instructions |
| Required gait | Walk, trot, canter or halt, where the discipline uses one |
| Time limit | An obstacle-level limit for this division |
A worked example
The EXCA ruleset requires exactly 10 obstacles for Novice and exactly 12 for Intermediate. Those two envelopes look contradictory — and they are, if you think in terms of two courses.
You place twelve obstacles once. On the Novice tab you untick two of them — the log drag and the teeter bridge. Novice now rides ten and Intermediate rides twelve, from one course.
Then, on the obstacles both divisions do ride, you say what each has to do with them:
| Obstacle | Novice | Intermediate |
|---|---|---|
| Wooden Bridge | Walk across in a steady rhythm | Trot on, halt with all four feet on the deck, stand three seconds, walk off |
| Water Crossing | Walk through in one continuous effort | Trot through without breaking gait |
| Barrel Weave | Trot the weave, turn, trot back | Canter the weave, simple change through the turn |
One bridge in your library. One bridge in the arena. One placement on the course. Two rides.
Below the variation table sit the division's own settings — its time limit, which overrides the course-level one.
Stage 5: Course Settings, Safety and Sign-off
The rest of the right column is everything that isn't the obstacles themselves.
Course settings
- Judge — recorded on the course and printed on the judge sheet.
- Course time limit — the course-level limit in seconds. Divisions can override it.
- Course walk details — anything competitors need to know: when it opens, where to come in, what to stay off.
- Show instructions to riders — some clubs publish the full instructions ahead of time; others publish the map only. Turning this off hides instructions from the rider view without removing them from the judge and setup sheets.
- Show map to riders — the same choice for the course map image.
Safety checklist
Your ruleset's safety checks are copied onto every course when it's created. Ticking one records who completed it and when — it's a signature, not a checkbox.
The EXCA ruleset requires all six: arena footing, every obstacle inspected, no sharp or protruding hazards, breakaway equipment fitted, emergency access clear, and a post-setup inspection. Every mandatory check must be complete before the course can be published — that one is an error, not a warning.
Approvals
Record sign-off as Course Designer, Judge, Technical Official or Organiser. The name is stored at the moment of approval and kept, the same way judge names are kept on classes — so the record still reads correctly years later.
Which roles are required comes from the ruleset. EXCA 2026.1 requires Judge and Organiser, at warning severity — so a missing approval blocks publication until someone acknowledges it deliberately.
Equipment list
Every obstacle's requirements, added up across the whole course, checked against your venue's inventory. This is the list the setup crew loads the trailer from.
Stage 6: Validate
Click Validate at any time. Horsify runs every rule in your ruleset and reports what it finds.
Findings come in four severities, and they behave differently:
| Severity | Effect |
|---|---|
| 🛑 Error | Blocks publication outright. Fix it |
| ⚠️ Warning | Blocks publication until acknowledged by someone with authority, with a justification recorded |
| 💡 Recommendation | Never blocks. Advice worth reading |
| ℹ️ Information | Never blocks |
What EXCA 2026.1 checks
Errors:
- Every division maps to a class and includes at least one obstacle
- Exactly one Start and one Finish
- The division's obstacle count matches its envelope (Youth 10, Novice 10, Intermediate 12, Non-Pro 13, Open 13)
- No obstacle exceeds the division's difficulty cap (Youth and Novice 3R, Intermediate 4R, Non-Pro and Open 5R)
- Every included obstacle resolves a difficulty rating
- Every included obstacle resolves instructions
- No division uses an obstacle category it's restricted from
- Every mandatory safety check is complete
Warnings:
- Divisions requiring a time limit resolve one — from the division, the course, or every obstacle
- The required approval roles have signed off
- The venue holds enough equipment for the course
Recommendations:
- Heavy obstacle reuse from your previous event (more than half the course), so you don't run the same track twice
Acknowledging a warning
Some warnings are legitimate. You know the extra poles are coming on the truck. Acknowledge the warning, record why, and it stops blocking.
Acknowledgements are keyed to the rule and the division, so editing the course afterwards doesn't silently clear them — but a different rule firing is a new warning that needs its own decision.
When everything passes, the panel says so, and the course moves to Ready.
Stage 7: Publish
Click Publish.
Who can see it:
| Visibility | Who |
|---|---|
| Entrants only | Riders with an active nomination in one of this course's mapped classes. This is the default, and what most clubs want |
| Signed-in users | Anyone with a Horsify account |
| Public | Anyone, including people who aren't signed in |
Schedule for later lets you set a time in the future — useful when the committee wants the course released at 6pm the Thursday before, not whenever it happened to be finished.
Publishing always re-validates. A course that passed validation an hour ago and has been edited since is re-checked at the moment you publish. If it now fails, publication is refused and you're told why.
Stage 8: What Riders See
Entrants get a View Courses button on the event page, which opens their own course sheet.
Riders see the version for the class they entered — the Novice rider sees the ten-obstacle Novice route with Novice instructions, and never sees Intermediate's. They see obstacle photos, the required gait, the difficulty rating, and the time limit. Organiser-only material — approvals, safety sign-off, the audit trail, other divisions — never reaches this page.
If instructions or the map were switched off in course settings, they're hidden here without affecting the printed sheets.
Printables
Five PDFs, generated from the course as it stands. Pick a division first where the sheet is division-specific.
| Sheet | For |
|---|---|
| Rider course sheet | Pin it on the entry board — the obstacles in order, with instructions |
| Judge sheet | The judge's copy, with room to score |
| Course setup sheet | For the crew building it — setup instructions and safety requirements per obstacle |
| Equipment list | What to load |
| Safety checklist | To carry round the course on inspection |
After Publication
The course lifecycle
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Being built. Riders never see it |
| Validation failed | The last validation run found errors |
| Ready | Validation passed; awaiting sign-off |
| Approved | Required approvals recorded |
| Published | Visible to its audience |
| Locked | Frozen, typically once competition starts. No further edits |
| Completed | The class has run. Kept for history |
From Published you can lock the course, unpublish it back to draft, or mark it completed. From Locked you can unlock it back to published, or complete it.
Edits are audited
Once a course has been published, every change is recorded — what changed, its old value, its new value, who made it, and when. Open Show change history at the bottom of the designer.
This is what lets you answer "was the water crossing in the Novice course on the day?" months later, with an answer rather than a memory.
Cloning
Cloning copies a course — obstacles, divisions, variations and settings — into a fresh draft, without touching the original. It's how you carry a course you were happy with into next season's event, and then adjust it.
The clone starts as a Draft with its safety checks unticked and no approvals. That's deliberate: last year's footing inspection does not certify this year's arena.
Troubleshooting
"No ruleset is published for this discipline yet." The discipline you picked has no ruleset. Extreme Cowboy Racing ships with one; the other course disciplines are still to come. Choose Extreme Cowboy Racing, or ask us about a club ruleset.
A division shows "No class mapped yet". Add the competition class to the event first, then map the division to it. Until it's mapped, no rider can reach that course and validation reports it as an error.
"The course has N validation error(s) and cannot be published." Click Validate to see them listed. Errors are always specific — they name the division, and the obstacle where relevant.
"The course has N unacknowledged warning(s)." Either fix the underlying issue or acknowledge each warning with a justification. Acknowledging is a deliberate, recorded act — not a dismiss button.
An obstacle I deleted is still on an old course. That's intended. Deleting an obstacle that's in use deactivates it instead, so historical courses stay readable. It won't appear in the picker for new courses.
The equipment check says nothing at all. Your venue has no equipment inventory recorded. Add items in the Venue equipment panel on the obstacle library page and validate again.
I can't edit a published course. Check its status. A Locked course is frozen by design. Unlock it back to Published to edit, and note that every edit after publication is recorded.
Related Guides
- Extreme Cowboy Racing — setting up ECR events, divisions and the reverse-registration draw
- Competition Classes — creating the classes your course divisions map to
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Event Workflow Guide — where course design sits in the run-up to an event\n\n---\n\nSource:
wiki/features/COURSE_DESIGNER.md\nLast synced: 2026-09-07 11:49:13 UTC