But do the types of courses incline/encourage the less experienced to ride like that , i.e., adjusting three strides out? I thought a discussion at one point , a few years ago, was the speed and adjusting required (stop and go) (with solid fences) contributing to falls.
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Taking up a different point now…
We’ve been going on about USEA and USEF on this thread but while this fatal accident occurred in the US, the rider was a Canadian from Alberta.
As most of you here know, I’m American but have spent many years in Canada, have been active in sport orgs in Canada and retain various ties to Canadians.
It’s not easy to be an eventer in Canada. This is why many of them settle in the US.
I’ve had many conversations with Canadian eventers about how difficult it is to get good instruction in Canada. I was told by one young UL rider - he was looking for help with his dressage - that the dressage trainers ‘want nothing to do with us’. Others struggle to find anyone to go to for coaching within a reasonable driving distance.
The fact that the ever-morphing NSF which is at the moment known as Equestrian Canada (this might change by the time you read this) is a total dumpster fire is not a plus. As we all know, team selection processes are corrupt and inconsistent and don’t bother to follow their own rules. (They have lost some court actions over that but they apparently just pay out the money and carry on in their ways.)
In most parts of Canada, there is no eventing whatsoever. In Ontario, Alberta and BC you’ll find some HTs but I’m not sure there’s anything above Prelim anymore. BC - where I lived for many years - has very few HTs now.
I think all this is worth mentioning because a rider like Kat Morel probably didn’t have that many options in terms of coaching. She probably had opportunities for clinics with BNTs occasionally - and that’s only if the organizer didn’t fill the clinic with their own students.
(I know Buck Davidson was in BC last week because Blugal rode in it with the lovely young mare that she got from me. But I also know those opportunities are rare.)
And of course, if one lives in Calgary, you are riding in the heated indoor for much of the year. XC schooling is a summer-only thing.
So while we’ve been discussing this in terms of US eventing, a Canadian rider like Kat Morel faced a slightly different and perhaps more difficult path to eventing success.
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Yes JER! And I find here in Ontario the upgrade culture is so very very strong.
perfect example is this Instagram page started recently “Canadian Eventers”. They do little write ups about riders who send the info. Every single one says “showing XYZ but planning to upgrade next summer!”
Why isnt the current level enough. It seems you’re judged by what level you do and what level you plan to do in this country and it’s just ridiculous. Lack of education and good coaching, even some of our Olympians are pushing people WAY too fast up the levels with major holes in training. They push horses themselves. Bentley’s Best is a perfect example. That hose has said time and time again he is done but I see he’s entered in a 4*.
Not a lot of people in Canada give a rats ass about Eventing safety. It’s all about bragging rights and getting on teams.
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One related question, that I don’t honestly recall the answer to. When foreign riders ride in the USA they have (heretofore) ridden under the level requirements of their own nation. As such riders who rode in the US in the past from Brazil, Bermuda, Mexico, Argentina and other locales have Not had to do the same amount of events at a level before ascending to the next level as an American eventer.
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IS this still true?
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Does her record comply with the same qualifications she would have needed to compete in the USA as an American at the Int level?
Em
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This is not unique to Canada, though very sad. :no:
The upgrade culture is very strong in US too. I experienced it as a teen and that was a long, long time ago.
I see this all the time peripherally - I don’t compete often but I do volunteer/JJ every year for multiple Area I events, there is a lot of move-up culture, especially from parents… and coaches can either go with them and retain them as clients, or lose them to coaches with less ‘moral backbone’.
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Even at lower levels. My trainer (don’t use her anymore) years ago would say me and my horse were ready to do BN, but honestly we really weren’t. Looking back now, I know how much we didn’t know then that caused issues we had.
And it doesn’t help that there are a lot of people that say you aren’t REALLY eventing until you get to, say, Prelim. Makes riders want to push faster than they should to get to the “real” levels of eventing. If riders need to stay at tadpole/starter/BN/N levels to stay safe until they are ready to go bigger, they need to be encouraged to do so.
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There is currently a GoFundMe set up to promote frangible fences/MIM clips for Prelim and above -
https://www.gofundme.com/f/frangible-fences-for-eventing-in-us
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I really just wanted the statement to stand on its own, and not make any judgements on my part. I was concerned it would morph into a “discussion” about team choices.Even though that was a scary video, the rider is what one would call accomplished. Why she chose to ride that horse at that level, would be a question for her. I’m certainly not comparing the two riders. Do with it what you will, just means that on this B.B. things can go sideways in an instant and people start to infer all kinds of things that just aren’t there. My comment on the video was meant for nothing other than information.
Having owned and owning upper level horses, and having an intermediate horse experience a career ending injury at a table puts this topic close to home for me.
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Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Equestrian Canada required anyone entered for their first long format ( roads and tracks and steeplechase) to be evaluated by the national team coach. He did clinics across the country and went over the rider’s conditioning plans, competition schedule, as well as the riding portion of the clinic. At the end, he did a written evaluation of your readiness and sat down with you, and your coach if they were there, to discuss.
I thought it was a good idea at the time and still do. That outside perspective is good.
However those stopped and EC no longer has the funds (or maybe the political will) to send a national coach around. Instead this year we are going to be graced with a “lecture demo” in which probably only 8 people will ride, and a lot of politically correct murmuring will occur.
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Blugal, that is such a great idea - I do think it could be done at least partly via video. I am late to this discussion but did watch the Rebecca video, and am firmly in the camp of “if that seems average or normal to you, we have a very big problem.”
One could imagine a system where riders new to the level (or new combinations) would have to submit two competition videos at their current level for review by a panel of experts. Certainly prior to Intermediate and you could make a strong argument for prior to Preliminary.
and Em, I do think Gnep was talking about Ashker and Frodo Baggins. I was there that year (although thankfully not at that fence at that moment) and did Jimmy’s course walk. There was indeed a little dip in front of the fence, which I think is what Gnep means. I remember this because Jimmy said - THIS is the important thing about this fence. You have to ride THIS correctly in order to make the fence come to you. If you just come blazing through here like it’s not here, you will be in trouble. The next day and for several days we talked about that because of the horrible accident - since we didn’t see it, we didn’t know if that is what happened, but from Gnep’s description it sounds as though Jimmy predicted it exactly.
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Laines fall was at the basket not a bank. She also says herself the reason they fell was she was going too fast and didn’t set the horse up at all.
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You know the interesting thing is that I went looking last night online for Frodo’s necropsy. And of what I could find online a couple things I never realized. And so maybe other’s didn’t as well.
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He left KHP alive and went to Hagyard.
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He was found to have a skull fracture and a severe lung injury, so he was put down.
I literally thought he’d died on course. And I can’t believe that was 12 years ago.
Em
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excellent description of EC @JER. I am in Manitoba, we do have some eventing here but it is not a province for someone who wants to seriously pursue it
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This Jim Wofford article from 2008, updated March 3 2020, gives a very intriguing answer to the question “Why the increase in eventing horse/rider deaths?” He attributes it partly to an excess of rider control that comes out of the dressage and SJ parts of the events. In former times and in the longer format, eventing horses had to be savvy and make choices on their own, and letting them do this (“own the jump”) was part of training. Long reins, rider getting out of their way to the extent possible. And in show jumping too, counting of strides and precision requiring a rider to be managing the horse, rather than the horse making smart decisions for itself.
He was told not to develop too much collection in dressage, because in collection the horse has given up its will to its rider, sort of.
Anyway it is well worth a read:
https://practicalhorsemanmag.com/training/jim-wofford-eventing-lives-balance-29236
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Being also heavily in dressage now I can see how true this is.
Example 1, my mom had a 2nd level mare whose number one judges comment was “obedient”. She was small and not a big mover and beat all the fancy WBs everytime because she was so obedient. Anyways, my friend rides her one day over fences for fun, she doesn’t jump a lot (the horse). We have a line set up down the centreline. She jumps well and gets to the end and my friend (hunter rider) goes flying over her head because Ace stopped at the end wall. We laughed and laughed, because she didn’t ask her to turn. She just sat there and expected Ace to make the turn. I said that’s a Dressage horse! She won’t do anything without being told :lol:
Example 2, Ive been jumping my dressage mare (7 yr OTTB) a lot this winter for cross training. She has done only dressage until now and much like my moms horse in that she is very obedient and that’s one reason she scores so well. I find when jumping her she waits for exactly my signal for everything we do. If I don’t tell her what canter, what foot falls, and even leg right at the base she will just carry on doing whatever canter or trot she’s been doing for eternity. You can feel in her how she is already too responsive and sharp to be a XC horse. She would never be thinking for herself out there. It is eye opening when you feel exactly what he is talking about.
But that being said I don’t think our courses allow for this riding anymore. You have to be so accurate with your spot canter and distance, I don’t know if this applies now as it did then.
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Why are you so unpleasant?
It’s not even your opinions, everyone is allowed to have their own opinion. You are just nasty in how you speak to others a lot of the time.
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Funny that LA comes up here again.
Ashker mere, who lives in California, used to be in the practice of spamming the area USEA membership list with emails of her horses for sale. They were OTTBs, nice enough horses, all ridden by dear daughter.
Because Ashker mere felt she could spam me, I felt I could comment on her wares (I’d mentioned this here before) and I even shared the videos with some eventing friends for the same purpose.
The one thing the horses had in common was that not one of them was ever straight. They weren’t straight in dressage or in SJ or on XC.
FWIW, rider straightness almost always has to be corrected by eyes on the ground. The rider doesn’t know what straight is and the rider thinks they’re straight. This is why good feedback is so important in this process. (I like to put someone else on my horses to see if they know to keep themselves straight.)
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Is this someone who was banned and is showing up again because that’s what it sounds like.
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Looking at the bigger picture, the elite riders Andrew Nicholson and William fox Pitt have also both had traumatic falls.
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