I know basically nothing about XC jumps but this is an interesting question to me as a H/J rider. The frangible pins and MIM clip tables are not meant to give way if the horse just brushes them, are they? Don’t they have to be hit pretty solidly (aka potential serious accident) to collapse?
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The one rotational fall I heard about in detail from the jump judge who was it wasn’t a head injury that caused the death. It was a rotational fall. The horse landed with his withers directly on the rider’s chest and crushed his chest. The EMT’s could not intubate him. He might have also had head injuries but he wasn’t surviving the chest injuries. This was before jump vests. But my understanding is jump vests cannot protect the rider against a horse landing with all of their weight concentrated on the chest. The lone exception to that may be the EXO vest which is no longer produced. Therefore this rider’s cause of death may not be entirely from a head injury.
There may be more durable helmets but if you make a helmet too heavy then it affects the rider’s balance. A motorcycle helmet might help but that would limit visibility and is too heavy. A rider looking down as they approach the jump can negatively affect where a horse jumps from and that is just with the change in where the weight of the riders head with a lightweight helmet or even without a helmet. If you add in a heavy helmet then a tiny mistake is magnified.
A friend of my husband’s was in a riding lesson many years ago. The horse was cantering. He stumbled, went to his knees and the woman’s head was snapped forward, the horse recovered, her head was snapped back, he stumbled again, head snapped forward, he recovered and her head snapped back again. She never came off the horse, she never hit her head. She still got a major TBI due to her brain sloshing in the skull. Basically shaken baby syndrome. There was nothing for the helmet to protect her from as there was no direct blow. No she didn’t die but it negatively impacted her for many years.
I pay medical claims for a living. I currently am paying medical and disability for a 17 year old that fractured his neck and is a quadriplegic. He was hitting a tackling dummy in football practice. I paid death benefits for another football player that died in practice due to his heart stopping. There are plenty of sports that have risks of death or awful life changing injuries. There are no protective gear that can protect against everything. Plenty of people die in car accidents and they have on seat belts and have air bags.
Yes, I think there are changes to the sport of eventing that can minimize the risks but those risks will always be there.
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I am a pleasure rider whose real love is trail riding. I have, however, had the opportunity to be around eventing for many years due to my daughter doing a bit of it with her instructor and in Pony Club. Also, many of the students at my riding instructor’s barn do eventing, so I have watched so many lesson and gone to many events, both recognized and schooling events.
All of this to say, what I became fairly decent at was recognizing a lack of balance or straightness, or rider posture, or actually what I saw so many times was the silhouette of a rider/horse who looked dangerous to me.
I agree with JER and with RAyers that problems have been going on for so long with riders not having the proper riding basics which then get them into trouble at the higher levels.
Many years ago, my daughter had a Pony Club friend whose sister very tragically died riding advanced at an event. it was horrible. She was very young, 21 years old. She had the distinction of being the youngest rider to ride advanced in some of eventing’s most challenging courses. She rode in the US and in England and had instruction from those whose names you would recognize as among the very best. I looked at old photos and videos of her riding advanced (and at lower levels) and over and over, what I saw was “ballerina toes” and her upper body tipped forward and her lower leg swung back in what I called “diving position”. In other words, take the horse away and put her on a diving board and she would have been in good form. So I wondered to my instructor, why in the world with all these fantastic instructors, did no one make sure to correct her position? And how does a rider get to advanced still riding like that?
What others here have said, many riders and parents and even trainers have an agenda and they want to rush up the levels. My instructor lost students because of her insistence about firm basics.
I am not blaming this rider and I am not blaming the rider in my example … but I am still wondering how in the world these huge holes in rider training continue.
SCM1959
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I appreciate that some of the more recent posts are tackling a difficult issue with empathy and balanced, well thought-out points. As a former barn mate of Kat’s, they are hard to read but thought provoking and helpful to the sport.
What is not helpful, in case anyone thinks I harbour wishes of MYOB and avoid-talking-about-it to spare feelings, is the spirit and tone with which that video was hunted down and then pointed at to imply that she had it coming, and it was her fault, and she should never have been at that level. That if you make a mistake or ride imperfectly, death is a predictable and acceptable outcome. Maybe some of you are better at interpreting intent in people’s posts, but some of these have not been constructive or empathetic - I stand by my assessment of cruel. If you want things to change, keep in mind that your word choice and tone could be the difference between someone accepting what you have to say, and closing the door.
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I have seen a rider, riding with a very well known rider/trainer who is very outspoken about correct position and how it can save your ass, tell him “That’s just how I ride” when confronted with criticism for ducking onto her horse’s neck on every fence, big or little.
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I absolutely agree that eventing XC needs to be made safer so that an accident does not mean a chance of death. However, something really needs to be done to increase the quality of riding out there. There is a reason that non-eventers but other horse sporters (such as H/J or dressage) are scared to watch the over fence portions at events. I’ve seen so many scary SJ rounds where people can’t seem to find a fence or count strides. Same on XC where they saw and kick and then stand up in their stirrups with a death grip on the mouth and then are congratulated afterwards. What’s more, many seem to take it as a badge of honor that they ride by the seat of their pants. Now, I get that part of the problem is that most eventers don’t have the finances to have consistent training, but in that case I really believe that there should either 1) be a rider effectiveness/equitation score included in the over fence portion or 2) higher use of yellow cards and more qualification criteria to move up the levels. I know many professionals who are down right scary on XC, and that simply should not be.
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what we have seen with pins is that they fail pretty often. Sometimes from just a small hit, other times a horse whacks it and it doesn’t move or give. The technology isn’t exactly 100%.
I seriously worry about collapsable tables. I worry about that it teaches our horses. If the XC jumps all become frangible the sport will widdle away and die because it is insanely expensive, time consuming to set these up (and deal with them at events). I will probably quit eventing if this happens, it won’t be long until the courses are then shortened and we basically have a glorified derby course. I might as well jump show jumps or do derbys and try and win some money.
I would much rather have course designers who don’t choose fences they know cause falls. Stewards who have the balls to give a talking to or report riders they think are not ready. I would also love to implement the equiratings method to help improve safety. Study the fence placing, study the lighting, etc. It just takes effort, not gimmicks and bandaids.
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Hit Air is on Facebook using this event as a marketing tool to increase vest sales. To say I am disgusted is an understatement.
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Interesting, thanks. Didn’t realize that the tech performs inconsistently at this point.
The sport certainly may change as you describe, but as a completely theoretical exercise, I can say that I would actually consider participating in the sport if the jumps were all (consistently) frangible. But obviously I’m not the target audience here, or educated on the (many, many) nuances.
I’m not against this post. I don’t know the rider, their background or the horse, never seen a video. But from personal experience in Eventing, with a coach who pushed me up the levels when I needed more time at the lower levels. I eventually moved on from the coach, when I looked at her I had Rosie glasses on. Now looking back, half of my horses career was based on fear and saving my a$$. Now he’s at 16, we are working at basics, when he should be a school master. Its embarrassing, but I’ve accepted it.
I want to go Prelim, I’ve attempted it, with only 2 successes, and many failures. This is due to the lack of basics, holes in my training. I maybe wouldn’t call myself dangerous, but we weren’t safe at times. I’m lucky its been at training level, but bad things can happen at all levels.
Had someone pulled me aside and said something, I would’ve been angry and sad, but I wouldn’t ignore it. Although I am the type to over analyze and am a perfectionist. I would’ve worked on it. We are now, but it’s much later than I would like.
I think we have many many riders who are pushed up the levels, with horses that are too green and riders that are too green. Back in the day you could take any horse out of a field and event it. Eventing is not the same, the expectations are much higher for rider and horse. For good and bad.
A lot of these upper level riders don’t have the foundation themselves, never mind their students. Basics are lacking because you look cooler with higher level students, then a bunch of barn brats going lower levels. Students are also to blame, they see social media, you see these people excelling with no issues, and then we think it should be that easy for us. I think the rules need to be stronger for levels, in the sense that you should have to ride a certain level for a certain amount of time. I know we have rules, but maybe they aren’t enough.
I’ve seen a large group of certain students constantly fail, but they keep going up the levels.
Is this too soon and too raw, yes, but its something that needs to be discussed. So for those who are offended, I’m sorry, it’s a loss in our world and its absolutely devastating, but bringing discussion to it, whether its criticism or ideas, we need them to get to the next point. Its going to make everyone uncomfortable, but this discussion HAS to happen. Or another death will happen, and another and another.
I am also sad to see that the event continued on. It should’ve been cancelled.
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To those who knew Kat: if anything I have written here is coming across as cruel, I am very, very sorry that it is coming across that way to you. It is not my intention at all to say anything hurtful or personally negative about her. I only intend to convey my assessment of the video of her ride at Rebecca Farm, as that is the only thing I know of her skill set or her riding.
Do not read further if my comments have come across as cruel.
What is visible as a whole in that video is a combination of horse and rider getting lucky, often. Handsy riding getting the horse together over and over and then barely popping over the fence. That’s not the same thing as one fence out of the whole ride being scary or the horse mis-reading it and getting lucky, or a rider being loose in the tack once in a while.
I wonder something: jump judges are almost always volunteers. Many are first-time volunteers, someone’s spouse or a friend or a barn buddy or someone who got roped into it. We hope they are qualified, but we’ll take them either way. There’s a quick morning meeting and off you go. Relying on a pool of variably qualified people to do something as profound as raising a significant concern around rider safety is a really, really big ask. Bringing a concern like that to the Ground Jury is a lot.
Am I the only one wondering about the sport’s reliance on a pool of very well meaning and much appreciated people who maybe don’t know a ton about what they are looking at?
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Thank you; to your second point, I absolutely worry about this, to the point that it keeps me from volunteering. Despite having ridden for years, I don’t feel qualified to jump judge or make those hard calls- I completely failed that quiz/survey where you had to predict the outcome of a jump. I’m not an uneducated rider but I’m just starting to be able to see the nuances of other people’s rides- would I be able to tell the difference between a dangerous ride and one that was required for the circumstances in the blink of an eye and heat of the moment? I don’t think I could! Plus a jump judge sees just one jump- maybe it was hairy but maybe the rest were fine. Or maybe they were all near disasters. So yes I worry about this a lot and feel it’s either a big burden to put on volunteers, or we need to train people up more.
That’s also why it’s easier to have hindsight and look at videos and judge someone’s riding. Maybe things add up now, but didn’t seem like red flags to the rider or trainer or friends at the time. So I do agree that we need a stronger culture of analyzing near misses and incidents with a critical eye.
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I think XC yellow card penalties are similarly hard to give out like eliminating a horse in dressage for being/looking lame. It’s very easy to make a horse look rein lame, and the judge isn’t a vet, so often times will let a horse continue and just hit them in their gait scores. I think dangerous riding is similar, and volunteers don’t want to take a stand on something that can be argued is subjective.
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honestly I’m surprised there hasn’t been a death in Ontario yet. The only thing on our side is not many events at the Intermediate and above level. A lot of the Prelim rides in Ontario scare the hell out of me, especially those aiming for YR who are not under any sort of program.
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Thank you for an excellent, informative post.
There is a very sobering saying amongst military aviators… essentially, aviation safety and training manuals have been written in blood.
Standing boards with individuals from a variety of backgrounds exist in different types of aviation (military, civilian, commercial) that examine serious accidents in great detail. Especially fatal ones. They look for causative factors, and issue comprehensive reports in the wake of these tragedies so people can learn, and for the safety of everyone going forward forward. Pilot error is a causative factor in many tragic fatal accidents. But tragic accidents are almost always multi-factorial. Failure to learn by deeply examine all factors is a missed opportunity. Pilots I’ve known have a deep love for aviation. Acknowledging pilot error in the wake of a horrible tragedy is not intended as a smear of a fellow aviator. It’s intended as a way to improve upon operating procedures, and to document and add to the general body of knowledge that aviators refer to as part of a continual learning process. To further hone their skills. To become better at their chosen risky profession/passion.
It seems like maybe if there was a more organized post accident analysis and reporting process within the sport, perhaps organized via the governing body especially when accidents occur at a recognized competition… that maybe it would mitigate raw feelings that those close to the individuals who have passed are experiencing as they witness a broader discussion going on in the community about this tragedy in comments online in various places. It’s a really hard thing. But there is a value to looking at all factors related to a tragedy. It can help in terms of continuous improvement with respect to safety. The legacy of those lost might be saving future riders. And that’s something to strive for and a positive way to try and honor and remember them.
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I am so sorry for the family and friends of this rider. As per the rider deaths in Australia, I would like to believe/hope that a formal inquest is conducted with the results creating mandated change to prevent further injuries/fatalities.
It just seems like there are so many factors at play in modern eventing, such as increased speeds, potentially dangerous styles of fences, lack of access to proper/appropriate coaching for the riders, a widening gap in costs between safe/experiences horses versus riders trying to bring up very green or track horses, etc.
There also seems to be a sort of “Bermuda triangle” effect in the middle levels (Prelim + Intermediate particularly) where you combine some the aforementioned factors and the outcome of your round is unknown.
Seems crazy that Philippa Humphreys’ daughter is going to be 5 this year. So many small children left behind, so many mourning parents, widowed spouses and of course friends and family. Seems like the phrase “dying doing something they loved” rings a bit hollow now. There’s a big difference between a freak accident and rotational fall, so it seems these days.
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Well, it’s out there for all to see. Let’s see what the ‘public’, PETA, and others say—maybe shut down Eventing altogether? Too dangerous for the Olympics? Too dangerous to hold at all? Just have upper level Combined Events?
See, I haven’t actually seen a single person say “Oh look at how she rides, she had it coming”. I saw someone post a video of her riding and point out that with the way she was riding in that video, if she continued that style (which it sounds like she did), it is not surprising that this happened. This ISN’T hunting her down, this is pointing out that dangerous riding can cause mistakes that can be fatal. And the video posted WAS dangerous riding. She was straight up being run away with quite often, no control, which is NOT ever okay regardless of how many times it’s seen. Saying that is not being cruel, it is pointing out cold hard facts. And if pointing that out, that if you are unable to be in a good rhythm and under control at the Prelim level then you shouldn’t be moving up to the next level because a really bad accident can happen, could possibly prevent someone else from dying? I think it is a good thing to call attention to.
Not long ago, there was another girl that died schooling cross country, with people discussing on here what could have caused it and what could be changed, and more people coming in to say that the discussion needs to wait until later after the accident. Guess what? The discussion stopped, and it never really started back up again. I feel so, so much for the people that knew Kat and her horse, but THIS IS the time that it needs to be discussed. If you wait, it will once again become another unfortunate accident in the past. If even one person reads this thread, sees the video, thinks “Oh wow I actually look like that in my videos running cross country, maybe I need to really take a step back and address that”, and becomes a safer rider, then at least something good can come out of this. If the only things said about this accident are how awful it was and how mistakes and freak accidents happen and it’s the risk of the sport and sorry for your loss, then nothing good can come out of this at all. In fact, if this keeps happening, I would not be the least bit surprised if eventing is somehow banned as a sport.
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The thing is, it’s always “too soon” for some people, and unfortunately, too late for others.
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^^^ This (post 157)
I’m so,so sorry to hear about this accident, and my deepest condolences to her family, friends, barn mates and co-competitors
The video was so similar to my horse and I (but we were only Novice/PT and then Entry/BN)! I saw in that video what I felt with my horse- a panicky horse, jumping because she was expected to, but not because she ‘loved’ it. It’s why, IME, the horse in the video wasn’t straight, as @JER pointed out.
When I first felt it with my horse, I dropped her back a level, and when that STILL didn’t seem to give her confidence, I stopped jumping her. Luckily my horse also had the sense to stop at fences when she didn’t feel quite right, but if she hadn’t, I shudder to think… Now I just do dressage with her, but I will never stop planning to get back into eventing when I have the next right horse, and I’ve ridden enough (and to Prelim) that I know what a good, confident round should feel like (it should feel like a hunter round, only a little bit faster, but that smooth and “pretty”, imo)
I wasn’t going to post anything, but @RainWeasley’s last part of her last paragraph is exactly what I was thinking reading this thread that I HAD to post
ETA: in the interest of full disclosure, and putting my money where my mouth is, I do admit to riding (part of) a Prelim xc round once, where my jump #10 was- 1st a refusal, and then on re-representation, not keeping the straightness that is so vital to a safe jump. I got lucky- I was thrown clear of the horse as she went slowly over the jump.The photographs sequence are very ugly. I’ve been told I was out for several minutes, as was my horse, but we were able to come back from that one and after another year downgraded to T, we went back up to Prelim for a final, successful season until her health issues (melanomas- as I’m sure most of you have read about) stopped us in our tracks. Sorry for the novel, but in retrospect, I think that is why I stopped jumping this current mare so easily- I had the benefit of hindsight and experience.
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