Badminton;

[BWP]

I’m not surprised re: Mollie, it was a very clear 3 hard smacks at the water. Had she also turned her whip upside down? I couldn’t tell when I watched.

I do feel that, comparatively, the pushing of Maxine’s horse at the last, where it collapsed, was far worse horsemanship than either unhooking a noseband before tack check, or 3 smacks for a refusal. I mean, ideally none of that would have happened, but a verbal warning for the first and cards for the other two infractions seems out of kilter to me.

[wanderlust]

@brindille

Elisa, Amy Tryon’s disgusting push on Le Samurai and Laine Asker’s ruthless riding that took her horse’s life at Rolex will always stick with me.

As soon as I saw Fleeceworks Royal taking funny steps after the out part of the combination, I felt like it was watching LS and Amy all over again. Except Tamie, being the exceptional horseperson she is, pulled up and got off as soon as she realized it wasn’t just a quick sting with a couple bad steps.

Between that and Emporium, it was enough upper level XC for me to last a long time. I couldn’t watch Badminton.

[Willesdon]

FEI rules is two strikes with a whip, on the shoulder or behind the leg. These days, the riders tend to use the padded jockey ones.

[fordtraktor]

Maxime Livio should absolutely have had a yellow card for that fall. Anyone with eyes could see that horse was toasted. I wish he was suspended so he couldn’t go on to Pratoni, and might learn a #%}!| lesson.

Agree, NOT a fan.

[fordtraktor]

Agree, Toledo’s fall was such a gutting one, his round was beautiful. I feel like this was the sad result of his early draw. He would have seen some other issues there and taken a pull if so.

Nicola’s fall was horrific, and there’s no real lesson there except don’t hang a knee at a table. Seeing her motionless after the horse rolled over her was not something that needs to live on the Internet.

[StormyDay]

I personally believe it’s important to keep the footage of the falls. We do learn from them. Sometimes we learn how a rider incorrectly read a jump and it ended poorly. Other times we learn how a course can be improved to be safer for everyone.

A good example is that bounce. While most read the combination ok and made it through, we learned the last element in it obviously needs to be frangible. Course makers need to be able to see these falls to use that info to better the sport, and riders need to see them to apply pressure to shows to make the changes that are needed so it’s as safe as possible.

We should be aiming for zero horse falls at any event. But if we keep hiding the failures we aren’t going to reach that goal.

[betonbill]

Has anyone (and I mean a truly qualified person) produced a video analyzing some of these falls, and showing, if possible, what went wrong and why, and then what should have been done to avoid this in the future. Of course, there are some that happen for no clearcut reason, but I imagine those are rare. Most probably have an identifiable cause and having a discussion of what happened and how a similar mistake in the future could be avoided might be far more valuable than merely having them shown without any explanation.

[skydy]

The announcer and commentator discussed the fall at the bounce. I was easy to see what caused it. The rider was going too fast on a horse that had a big stride. There isn’t really any in depth studying needed for that one.

They do save the fall videos, they just don’t keep them all of them available to the public. I understand why they’ve removed Nicola’s fall, but I don’t understand them removing Maxim’s.That seems like a public relations move. Granted, watching a rider crash an exhausted horse into a jump is not a good look.

[FrittSkritt]

@skydy

They do save the fall videos, they just don’t keep them all of them available to the public. I understand why they’ve removed Nicol’s fall, but I don’t understand them removing Maxim’s.That seems like a public relations move. Granted, watching a rider crash an exhausted horse into a jump is not a good look.

Seems to be a common thread at the FEI level: officials seem to be so hesitant of the PR consequences of pulling a rider up on course lest riders, owners, and sponsors be outraged at the optics of it. And the yellow card system is worthless if the horse or rider ends up fatally injured.

FEI: “Let’s stick our heads in the sand and hand out a yellow card, that’ll change the safety culture!”

[StormyDay]

I know they do save them so the big name course designers can see them, but I really think it’s important for the public to be able to view them too. Public pressure is a great way to get things done. It’s easy for course designers/event holders to say ‘oh, the fall was rider error’ instead of investing the money to make the jumps safer. The frangible pin tech is not cheap. It’s a lot cheaper to build a non-frangible jump than one with the tech.

Going back to the bounce. Rider error should result in a run out, refusal, or the rider in the mud. It should never end with a situation like that. And it could have been avoided with a frangible jump. But without footage of it, we don’t know to ask for it.

Another thing is not every CC course is designed by a big name course designer. I’d bet many of us have schooled ones put together by laypeople. Some of us have probably attended schooling shows over courses that were put together by the owner of the property. Fall data is extremely useful for that.

[skrosenthal]

I think it’s also important to leave some footage of them available given how much of the sport’s safety culture is focused on, well, not having “bad pictures” at five stars and the olympics. Obviously you can’t make people who saw it live “unsee” it, but if you can just scrub the footage for the rest of the world it undoes some of the potential for these incidents to be catalysts for change.

[Willesdon]

@StormyDay

…
Another thing is not every CC course is designed by a big name course designer. I’d bet many of us have schooled ones put together by laypeople. Some of us have probably attended schooling shows over courses that were put together by the owner of the property. Fall data is extremely useful for that.

Do you really, really think that CDs just don’t care about the horses, the riders, the sport?

Look up FEI safety data - it is published annually, on line - and see how much safety has improved in eventing. A simple example, FEI directions now say tables must have both a clear ground line and a slightly raised far side so the horse can read the question clearly. Tables used to be scary fences, ridden with caution. Now riders see them to be easy galloping fences. But falls at tables have nonetheless decreased.

Schooling shows are outside the remit of the FEI or USEA. It is up to individual riders, obviously, to decide if they wish to pay the cost of safety research and development (and all the other associated regulation, admin, staff and volunteers) at an affiliated show or take a punt on a “layperson” building a course. If every schooling show put in fall data then to whom? by whom? on what? where does it go? who pays for the analysis? USEA has standard measures so as to compare apples with apples, in a common format, at all levels, around the country. Statistical analysis is difficult enough without poor data also being fed into the system.

My gripe is that USEA doesn’t publish an annual safety report.

[enjoytheride]

Public pressure tried to get Rich Strike’s outrider fired when the horse was biting him on the leg, the general public has no idea what to do with fall data and a “blooper” real of rider falls isn’t going to help.

[Sticky_Situation]

I won’t say that it’s good to sweep falls and other bad things under the rug, because it’s clear there’s still work to be done to keep horses and riders safer, and reviewing how falls happened can be used to prevent them in the future.

But unfortunately, a growing segment of the general population isn’t just concerned about horse welfare and keeping horses safe during sport … they subscribe to the “animal rights” viewpoint that any use of animals in human recreation is inherently wrong, and keeping the footage available to the general public gives those people (incorrectly, but they’ll inevitably see it that way) the impression of “see, people that ride horses are ok with this, so they’re all terrible and horse sports should be done away with.”

[Janet]

@StormyDay

Some of us have probably attended schooling shows over courses that were put together by the owner of the property. Fall data is extremely useful for that.

Which are HIGHLY UNLIKEY to have video of every fall. The only “fall data” you ae going to get is what the jump judge (who was probably also covering 2 other fences as well) THINKS caused the fall.

[skrosenthal]

Yeah, that’s part of why I’m so torn about it. I can see a number of arguments about why it’s important to not let those images linger in the world, particularly without explanation, and also it just feels a smidge sketchy to scrub them entirely. There’s also an extent to which the absence of information foments speculation that whatever incident it was was even worse than it actually was (see e.g. what transpired on this board during the wait for information about what happened to Emporium at Kentucky).

[StormyDay]

@Willesdon

@StormyDay

…
Another thing is not every CC course is designed by a big name course designer. I’d bet many of us have schooled ones put together by laypeople. Some of us have probably attended schooling shows over courses that were put together by the owner of the property. Fall data is extremely useful for that.

Do you really, really think that CDs just don’t care about the horses, the riders, the sport?

Look up FEI safety data - it is published annually, on line - and see how much safety has improved in eventing. A simple example, FEI directions now say tables must have both a clear ground line and a slightly raised far side so the horse can read the question clearly. Tables used to be scary fences, ridden with caution. Now riders see them to be easy galloping fences. But falls at tables have nonetheless decreased.

Schooling shows are outside the remit of the FEI or USEA. It is up to individual riders, obviously, to decide if they wish to pay the cost of safety research and development (and all the other associated regulation, admin, staff and volunteers) at an affiliated show or take a punt on a “layperson” building a course. If every schooling show put in fall data then to whom? by whom? on what? where does it go? who pays for the analysis? USEA has standard measures so as to compare apples with apples, in a common format, at all levels, around the country. Statistical analysis is difficult enough without poor data also being fed into the system.

My gripe is that USEA doesn’t publish an annual safety report.

I think course designers care a lot about the riders and horses. I’m sure every time there’s an accident they feel a bit responsible, And I know it’s a ton of pressure on them.
But I also know they have a budget they have to stay under. And many times that budget doesn’t allow for every jump that should be frangible to be so.

And I’m sorry, I think I may have written my post so it was misinterpreted. I was not saying schooling shows are filmed, or that data goes anywhere. I was saying that schooling shows mirror rated shows. My immediate reaction when I watched the course walk before badminton was that the bounce was one of the easier combinations on course. I read the broken bridge as harder, actually. Well, now that the event has ran, and I saw the video of the falls, I’d switch that; the broken bridge was a forgiving jump, but that bounce could be really dangerous if read wrong by the rider.

If I’m designing my schooling course knowing that is vital. Because the last thing I want is to put in a bounce and have a bunch of crash and burns.

[StormyDay]

@enjoytheride

Public pressure tried to get Rich Strike’s outrider fired when the horse was biting him on the leg, the general public has no idea what to do with fall data and a “blooper” real of rider falls isn’t going to help.

I seriously doubt the general public is watching the blooper reel of badminton. Actually, I bet if I went and interviewed a bunch of people on the street and asked them ‘do you know what eventing is?’ Very, very few would be able to answer me correctly.

Public pressure can be a very good thing. It can also be a not so good thing sometimes. But limiting knowledge in fear of public opinion is not how we better ourselves or our sport.

[StormyDay]

@Janet

@StormyDay

Some of us have probably attended schooling shows over courses that were put together by the owner of the property. Fall data is extremely useful for that.

Which are HIGHLY UNLIKEY to have video of every fall. The only “fall data” you ae going to get is what the jump judge (who was probably also covering 2 other fences as well) THINKS caused the fall.

I’m sorry, I wasn’t saying the schooling shows were filmed. I was saying the people who design their schooling shows use the footage of the rated shows.

[enjoytheride]

Schooling shows aren’t going to have Badminton style fences so they don’t need to watch fall tapes.

I don’t view it as hiding information. On this thread and others people were certain horses and riders were dead but they weren’t. I don’t see how that helps course designers or safety officials. The general public doesn’t always know what makes the difference is between a clear or a fall, and tou also can’t prevent all riding or horse errors.