The feeder design without a ground line - the false ground line is known or thought to suck horses under the fence too much -so when the top is wider than the bottom - a ground line is needed to keep the horse farther away - enough to get their gear up.
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When I bought my mare, my trainer at the time (I had to move) told me she can definitely run Training but her brain would dictate any higher. That made a huge impression on me as while my mare definitely has the scope to go higher, it was the first time someone didn’t focus solely on her scope. I think, sometimes, despite the horse having the athletic ability to go up the levels, some people ignore the mental factor for the horse and that might be contributing to accidents.
I don’t want to jump around anything and be fighting my horse the whole time. If she started ignoring my aides as the fences go up, well to me that means we need to not move up.
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It might be fine for you and me, two people who both say they know their limit (and I am sure my limit is well under yours) and are not going to let the pressure to conform to what someone else says makes one a real eventer.
But in the big picture it is not fine and it is part of the problem. It has been mentioned in this very thread. People feel they need to move up, that they are pressured to move up. People calling it a joke that someone knows their limitations and wants to do little fences is not helping.
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These are the arguments that get me though. Here we have a pattern of a fence emerging that is more likely to cause a fall and no one wants to hear it. Course designers, riders, etc all say horses jump better with a ground line. We have 2 deaths at fences with no ground line recently and still, everyone says its no issue. I mean, what is the harm in adding a ground line?
Why are so many against any change that could potentially save lives. This is exactly the attitude that is turning me off.
Of course no jump is “safe”. Of course you can jump without a ground line safely many times, however this type of fence specifically with the false ground line is not safe. It is the type of fence that has caused many many falls (that stupid planet fence at the Olympics then at what Burghley after?).
Just stop making fences that horses can’t read well.
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That’s very true. It’s not something I think about (unfortunately) because I’ve never had a coach push me too far. Thank you for pointing that out.
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I so so agree with this and honestly myself wasn’t something I really understood until a few years ago.
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Thanks everyone for explaining that fence. In the video, granted that was a smooth ride, it looked straight forward.
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I spent a good bit of time putting out bushes and groundlines at CHP getting ready for SPHT. We do put groundlines out. At all levels. We put bushes out to give horses fill and definition. The fence cited had a straw groundline. It had bushes filling out the bottom. Sometimes groundlines can cause problems if the horse dwells on that (my horse!).
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It seems what is fair to the horse needs to be one of the questions asked.
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Don’t know if anyone has read this post. https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/equiratings-system-british-eventing-trial-614895
Excellent, thank you for the link. This quote from the article really stood out to me. “Yet despite all these technical and regulatory initiatives making a direct contribution to fall reduction worldwide, the conversation kept returning to the riders who assume the Minimum Eligibility Requirement means “competent to upgrade,” especially in developing regions with few competitive opportunities.”
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And if the horse can’t read the fence well, is it reasonable to say the rider better be able to really help in that case??? Otherwise,…
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Could that fence be improved by adding an actual ground line? Not one clump of flowers in the center of the jump? Maybe a LINE of something?
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I haven’t competed in a couple years (admittedly a big part of that was the the sport has been pricing me out & I didn’t have a horse ready), but even before that, I always checked who the CD was before I entered an event, even unrecognized, & had a list of CDs that were a no-go no matter what & I was always willing to walk away, even though it was a LOT of money for me, I definitely can’t afford the alternative. But I agree with JER that from what I have seen, USEA doesn’t really care if it loses people like me, who can’t afford to do a bunch of competitions every year. They seem laser-focused on the pros with 8 horses, YRs with wealthy parents, & the moneyed ammies who continue to show up every month. I do think if a big enough chunk of those groups took an organized stand, it would carry more weight.
My opt-out decision can help keep me & my horses safe, but I don’t think it’s having any impact at all on the sport. I would like to event again (if horse quits vet addiction), & I have no aspirations above T, but as I stated before, I only want to support a sport that is willing to be honest with itself.
I’ve spent 15 years working in conservation, so I am painfully familiar with yelling into a void about important issues with real effects on everyone’s lives, only to receive a response of “meh, it’ll work out” - that’s basically my job description. The best chance you have in that kind of environment is to be organized, be loud, be everywhere, & don’t stop. Which is hard & frustrating & I’ve been on this board long enough to know that many people here have done exactly that, often to little avail despite great expertise, effort, & expense. Change does take time, but it CAN go faster than a soporific snail if it’s made a priority (which includes redirecting funding). I think it’s going to require buy-in from those groups with the money (= power) to force that priority to make meaningful progress.
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Straw and bushes are NOT ground lines! Horses know they can step on this. This is ridiculous. Course designers care more about the appearance of fences than they do the safety.
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I’ve told this story on these boards before, but it always pops into my head when we have these discussions. I was spectating a CIC***/**/* in Scotland, and I parked myself at a jump constructed of three huge logs, laid out like a W on its side, and the horses had to jump the pointy end of the W, along with a sizable ditch right in front of the W. They galloped down a long hill into this fence. The Intermediate horses were having all kinds of trouble with this jump, stopping, running out, even falling in the ditch. One of those horses galloped down the hill, took one look at it, and said no. The rider circled him around and came at the fence again, whipping and spurring, but the horse had no impulsion, and those of us watching were like, ‘Holy sh*t, how’s he going to get over that huge fence being way behind the leg like that.’ He didn’t. The horse lurched over the fence, smacking its back legs against the log, and we heard a Godawful crack. Horse galloped off with one back leg flapping in the wind, the rider seemingly oblivious. The spectators and jump judges ran after them, yelling, “Stop!” The rider pulled up, asking, “Is he alright?” “No!” we shouted. The rider jumped off and lead the horse away.
Later that day, I was in line at a coffee van, and I overheard a couple riders chatting about that accident. I said, “I saw it happen. Do you know if the horse was okay.”
“They put him down,” they responded.
“That’s awful,” I said.
The rider shrugged and said, "“Eh. Well, that’s the sport.”
I’m just a low level dressage rider and happy hacker, and I don’t hang around enough upper level eventers to know how endemic that attitude is, but I wandered off with my coffee, saddened that this guy saw horses as so disposable.
I’ll add that the Advanced horses looked far more convincing. Many of the Intermediate combinations looked as though they were at the limits of their abilities, which wasn’t the best place to be when galloping over large and technical fences. The *** level was easier to watch because it didn’t look like as many riders were trying to kill themselves and their horses.
As an aside, I read the Jimmy Wofford article, and while I thought he made some excellent points, I’m not sure how apt his comparison to steeplechasing is, steeplechasing not being the paragon of safety, either. In Britain, there’s flapping every year about how to make the big courses like Aintree and Cheltenham safer, and on the other side, people bemoaning, ‘The Grand National ain’t what it used to be.’
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Related to this, an interesting article that just came out exploring how horses see color & how that relates to their ability to read a jump: https://www.horsetalk.co.nz/2020/02/29/horses-see-world-jump-colours-rethink/
What we see as a contrast may not appear at all to the horse.
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This is one of the biggest issues in the sport.
Horses don’t see the way we do and they don’t get to walk the course. The horse gets to see it for the first time at speed, jumping stuff.
There is a general level of ignorance in the sport about how horses see.
In the Table of Doom shown here, you can point to any number of issues from the lack of clear sight lines for the horse. There’s the ground issue, there’s a dark/light issue going on with the shadows, there’s a white top to the table amid darker browns and a green background (research has shown that horses see white ‘later’ than brown or green) and there’s that the table appears to be flat (which I thought we’d done away with).
As others have pointed out, tables usually jump well. The shape is a good one for the arc of the horse, etc. The data is good on tables in terms of accidents.
But then tables have been involved in a number of serious accidents. It may be that accidents at tables are what would be called ‘low-probability, high-catastrophe’ - and that should be enough to give them a serious re-examination.
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Yes I saw this article and if you relate it to eventing, the ground lines they are using are not good enough are they.
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Eventing totally has ground-lines XC… but they likely need revision and updating in light of new knowledge about horse’s vision and perception.
Mulch and straw are not high contrast from the horse’s point of view. They serve as better ground-lines for the rider.
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