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I was looking at the entries for Blenheim next weekend and it shows Buck with two horses.
After his scary hard fall on Saturday, and following his hard fall at Badminton(??) a few months ago, I have real concerns about him competing again at this level this year, let alone two weeks later after his most recent awful fall.
I know it is their business, and the riders at this level are used to riding injured, but if I was the owner of one of the horses he is scheduled to ride at Blenheim, I would be terrified for the safety / life? of both horse and rider.
In my novice/training level rider opinion, he needs to take at least a month off riding altogether, let alone competing at the top level. It is not as if he is a rising star who may feel the need to ride injured, rather than risk losing a sponsor or owner.
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This is really late, but I am still catching up (on Replay #4 for XC now). I just saw Credoâs fall. So glad both walked off okay.
I remember seeing a comment about horses jumping solid looking XC fences better than SJ-looking ones.
I just want to point out, most horses know on an SJ fence, that if they rub or hit the rail, it will fall. Iâve owned horses who were a bit blasĂ© in jumping style over SJ, but were never careless on XC. I think if someone had put a mock-SJ jump in the middle of my XC course, they might have treated it like an SJ fence. Iâve never competed at the level where this has come into play.
Is this not a consideration in course design?
If you make a jump appear like an SJ jump, chances are a horse will assume they donât need to respect it the same way they need to respect a solid XC fence.
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Good points, beowulf.
Just because there is a frangible that will release does not mean a horse should be jumping through the top rail(s), as some will do during show jumping, when overfaced or just being lazy.
The frangible was intended for the hard rub. Not to allow the top of the fence to be treated like a brush fence.
And fwiw ⊠I wonder if we donât have some horses going back home to their schooling venues, that probably donât have frangibles, thinking that solid logs are not so solid.
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I posted this in the spin-off poll thread, but I am going to add it here as well. The fences that were scariest to me were the vertical white gates (16A and B) where Buck and his horse fell. I believe that Divine Comedy pointed out upthread that the collapsible technology used in that fence design was not incorporated properly (designed to collapse when fence hit head/chest on but fences were jumped at an angle). There were four eliminations at this fence (#16AB) with three of the four due to horse falls.
Then think about this - of the 20 pairs who were eliminated on cross country, 12 didnât make it as far as #16, and of the 11 pairs who retired on XC, only one retired past fence 16. What if it had been earlier on course? I think it was a disaster waiting to happen.
We know horses can learn that show jumping fences fall down and brush can be jumped through and some learn how to bank off fences with solid tops. But who knows what they learn about airy oxers and corners made of logs?
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The reason behind the penalties incurred for breaking a frangible pin is to ensure the riders respect the fence even though they know it will drop when hit.
I canât help but think back to the statement Liz Halliday-Sharp put out after the loss of her wonderful HHS Cooley, and wonder how she felt about the design at the Maltings. I know she has commented on the massive nature of the effort it required, even of a scopey horse like Deniro Z, but I wonder if she had other concerns about the design.
So that no one has to dig it up, this is what she posted in 2016:
âI want to put something out there about why this tragedy happened to my wonderful horse, and Iâm hoping that it might trigger some consideration and maybe some change for the future from the FEI and national federations. I also want to say that in no way at all am I blaming the Burgham event itself, as they have all been very helpful and supportive throughout this terrible situation.
âWhere we fell was at a very wide, but not very tall, open rail oxer off a turn. When I walked the course I remember thinking it was one of the widest I had seen in an Advanced competition and that it would demand respect and proper riding, and I was concerned that a horse could possibly misread it as a bounce.
âI went out on Blackie (Fernhill By Night) first and he jumped it well, and when I went out on Cooley I planned to give it the same amount of respect. I arrived at the fence with the correct pace and a good shot (confirmed by people who saw) and plenty of leg on, and as Cooley jumped he must have suddenly thought it was a bounce, and he came down in the middle of the fence, just in front of the back rail.
âThe fence was pinned, but I do not remember if it released and no one seems to be able to answer that â anyone I ask says they werenât paying attention to the fence, as they were all apparently attending to me since I had hit the ground so hard and was unconscious, and of course my horse was injured. (BE has since confirmed that the back rail reverse pin did deploy. See below for an update.)
âCooley was the bravest, best cross country horse I have ever had, with more scope and heart then any horse I have ever sat on, and there is no way that he would have jumped into that fence unless he thought that he was supposed to and had just misread it.
âThis is not the first time this year that an experienced, talented horse has misread and jumped into one of these open oxers and that the horse and rider have both been seriously injured. Sadly, on this occasion my wonderful Cooley had to pay the price with his life.
âI feel that perhaps the FEI and national federations need to think about how wide an open rail oxer can and should be, and perhaps beyond a certain width they should be made as a table or be ascending. Just because a fence is pinned does not mean that it should be pushing the boundaries of what horses can understand. Just one honest and experienced horse misunderstanding and losing his life is too many in my opinion.
âI hope that I am not alone in feeling this way, and perhaps if anything can come of this horrible tragedy, it can be some change and some consideration of these particular fences. My broken heart hurts so much more then my broken neck, and I cannot imagine going home and not seeing my gorgeous grey boy over the door.âÂ
https://eventingnation.com/liz-halliday-sharp-raises-safety-questions-after-hhs-cooleys-death/
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Oh, that is heartbreaking. Why havenât they listened? or have some course designers listened and some have not?
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And that is CMP in a nutshell.
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You know, Iâve watched this play out before, back in the late 90s and early 2000s. Same problems, same rider falls, same bad courses, same horse falls, same designer unfortunately, along with rider and horse deaths. The exact same question was asked, will you ruin the sport if you fix the xc? Changes were made to course design, frangible pins were developed and and things improved.
Now thereâs a new generation of riders and somehow the same issues are recurring. Itâs possible that the frangible pins are giving designers a false sense of security. Acting as though these fences are no different than stadium jumps set out in the open. If Ian Stark can see it, if I, just someone who loves the sport, can see it, then weâre getting back to the same problems. I may not be certain of the solutions but blaming the riders and horses, who qualified! for the way it rode is not the answer.
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The story of Liz and Cooley is an emotional one to read.
One of my problems is that there is an attitude expressed among some in 5* leadership that this is indeed the cost of the sport, and they are somewhat hardened to it. They donât seem moved to make such changes.
That jump configuration has been a recurring problem for a very long time. And yet the open fences with drop landings, or placed just in front of down banks, continue to be dangerous problems on courses. Thatâs very hard to understand.
In 2010 when Oliver Townend and his horse tumbled down the Kentucky staircase, breaking Ollieâs ribs and ending his bid for the Rolex Grand Slam, it happened just over a two years after Darren Chiacchiaâs near fatal accident at Red Hills over a configuration that had important similarities. An open log jump placed just in front of a down slope or a drop. And at Kentucky, Ollie was the third such fall on that day at the same obstacle. Course officials were following the problem but never acted to take the jump off the course, something they were castigated for later.
After Chiacchiaâs life-changing accident in 2008 there was a lot of focus and consideration of that configuration published in the media. There had been other rotationals at similar obstacles. Horses frequently just missed at those jumps. It seems that the horses tend to look through the jump to the lower landing and kind of forget how high they need to go, or are heavy in the shoulders anticipating the drop, or something like that. But it was catching them out on a regular basis.
And yet this year at Burghley we had similar configuration at the Trout Hatchery. An open oxer to a drop landing, with the added distraction of water.
At one time there was an effort to start putting together some written guidelines of assembled knowledge, with the purpose of making courses safer. I donât know what became of that. Or if course designers are open to using it.
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Then, now and always, blaming the riders is the cheapest and least impactful way out. Blaming individuals localizes the problem on them. No one else has to change.
And likely that is the real root of the problem - important figures in the sport are reluctant to change.
The same situation is seen in industries that have the potential for large, devastating, very public accidents. If there is a plane crash, blaming the pilot lets everyone else off the hook - the manufacturer, the airport, the flight control infrastructure, etc.
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Marigold, thank you. You are much more eloquent than I and perfectly correct.
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Here is a link to a New York Times article, an in-depth analysis of a possible safety crisis in eventing.
Interesting choice of subject as eventing is such a small segment of elite-level sport. And yet the NYT clearly saw something worth investigating , as did several other major news media outlets.
It examines the question, is it worth it? And the difficulties the sport is having with evaluating that question and coming up with changes for safety.
Oh, and ⊠it was published 10 1/2 years ago.
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Is anyone keeping statistics on horse falls? The FEI? USEF? USEA?
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That article was written less than a year after Darrenâs fall. His accident made the news in NY as I believe he has a large family presence there, he was a well known Olympic rider and average people knew of him. Like a Dale Earnhardt of NASCAR.
You know, without beating a dead horse so to speak, I remember after Kentucky, in 1978. It was something of a blood bath. There was one fence that was badly designed and caused most of the falls. It was a smallish field, (a young Mark Todd was there!) Out of something like 46 starters, from memory, I think 9 falls? And after the dust had settled a bit, I remember a spectacular photo on Equus magazine, something like Is eventing too tough? The photo was of Bruce Davidson jumping onto the Fort at the Head of the Lake.
Thankfully this time the real cause was discovered and Boeing couldnât blame the pilots, or the mechanics, or anyone else for all of the lives lost.
There was some sloppy riding and bad decision making, and some bad luck, at Burghley.
There also seem to have been some jumps that are known to cause horses to fall. When those jumps are identified as being, in reality, unfair to the horse, they should not be used. There are plenty of difficult cross country questions to separate the best from the average. Using a jump that is known to confuse horses is not right.
Why donât the riders complain? I mean really complain? Are there not enough riders that object to the jumps?
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This has been an issue for a long time. In 2008, at the Olympics, Phyllis Dawson (if memory serves correctly) came down in the middle of an open oxer because the horse thought that it was a bounce. She was not the only one. For a number of years after, this design fell out of favor. Apparently, those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
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So I finally got around to watching some of the XC. Quite a few hairy moments so far, but Iâve seen more than a few instances where the frangible pin technology saved the pair. Most note worthy was XC part 2 around 6:20. Sorry I canât remember the pair the the videos suddenly crashed, so I canât watch them again. They pretty much came down in the middle of one of the wide oxers. I know people arenât a big fan of the 11 penalty points for triggering them, but they do seem to be serving their purpose.
