Inquest into Eventing Deaths of Olivia Inglis & Caitlyn Fischer Currently in Australia

[JER]

@Where'sMyWhite

Sometimes, it takes something “catastrophic” to initiate change.

We’ve had ‘something catastrophic’ happen in eventing.

We’ve had so many Somethings Catastrophic that our current list on the ‘WTF Are We Doing?’ thread is already outdated.

(There were two XC schooling deaths in the US last week - and they wouldn’t even count because the deaths weren’t in competition.)

What would it take then? A mass casualty incident? Didn’t we have that at Red Hills in 2008?

There’s a new paper out called ‘Prediction-based neural mechanisms for shielding the self from existential threat’, concluding that our brains protect us by categorizing death as something that happens to other people. According to one of the authors:

“The brain does not accept that death is related to us,” said Yair Dor-Ziderman, at Bar Ilan University in Israel. “We have this primal mechanism that means when the brain gets information that links self to death, something tells us it’s not reliable, so we shouldn’t believe it.”

So maybe that’s WTF we’re doing: deluding ourselves.

[Where_sMyWhite]

@JER , I would agree, eventing has seen its share, and more, of catastrophes, both human and equine

What will it take? I can’t really answer that. In many sports, it ends up, IMO, that the ‘national governing body’ steps up, sometimes sooner and sometimes later (in the case of NASCAR, DE’s death was that triggered change (IMO) but his was not the first death. He was the 4th death in 8 months all of whom were killed by a basilar skull fracture. DE was just the “big name” compared to the other drivers… Adam Petty (grandson of Richard Petty), Kenny Irwin Jr and Tony Roper.

I thought at the time that NASCAR could/should have been doing more (and maybe they were but not visibly) to keep drivers safe. Yeah, HANS devices were out there but it was up to the driver’s discretion if they wore one or not. In the years since Dale was killed (February 2001), the cars are considerably safer, the seats the drivers sit in are considerably safe, the tracks themselves are considerably safer (with the install of the SAFER walls). At the top level, no driver has died since Dale was killed.

I don’t following event at a deep level to be able to answer your question of what it would take. Money for research combined with money to install changes? NASCAR was a 3 prong approach… the driver, the car and the track. Install of the SAFER walls at all the tracks took a few years to complete and I am sure, not inexpensive (but watching them “in use” to absorb the impact of a 3400 lb car into the wall is pretty impressive).

Is it that the eventing base just doesn’t have the dollars to invest in rider, horse, venue safety? Is it that the dollars might be there but no desire/need/drive to identify change and implement? It is rider/owner/sponsor lack of desire to implement? I don’t know.

I am sure there are many here who have thoughts on why change isn’t happening or happening faster. I know there are the safety vests of many kinds, I know there are the frangible jumps. Is it that frangible jumps aren’t the only answer? Is it that riders are resistant wearing only some types of vests or that the “right” vest hasn’t been developed?

As with horse racing, deaths will never be 0 (at least IMO). But, the pursuit of 0 should not stop even when the number begins to approach 0. Even in NASCAR today, do I believe that it is possible a Cup driver could die? I do, driving 3400 lb cars at close to or exceeding 200 mph is dangerous.

In eventing, what could/should be done to help move that number closer to 0 (both human and horse)? Or, as that article pointed out… it’s delusional… the “bad thing” will happen to someone else, not me. Having said that, even though it took NASCAR 8 months to mandate the HANS, most drivers had adopted wearing one (including a full face helmet which DE was not wearing at the time of his fatal crash) before NASCAR made the mandate.

If the different eventing oversight organizations had not made helmets or some sort of safety vest mandatory for competition, how many riders would be wearing helmets and safety vests? Some? Most? Almost none?

[add_leg]

And then on the flip side, you have the NHL where most players still don’t wear neck guards and probably won’t unless mandated. I guess watching a teammate nearly bleed out on the ice after having his carotid sliced by a skate isn’t enough - it will probably take an actual death for anything to change there. Which makes me think the answer to how many people would be wearing helmets and vests if they were not mandatory would be far, far lower.

[OverandOnward]

I was volunteer help at a used tack sale this past weekend, for a charity. There on the table piled with used horse stuff was a stack of battered Troxel-type schooling helmets. Dented, chipped, worn out, disgraceful-looking – and for sale. To any inexperienced parent or new adult rider, who just wanted something to ride in.

Right beside them were 3 of those old-style I-don’t-know-what-you-call-em hunt cap / hard hats. The ones I now think of as eggshell hats, because of their thin hard shells, with velvet stretched over the outside an inner foam padding about 1/8th of an inch think, lined with red silk. The kind they sold back in the 60’s & early 70’s. They look good because they are so thin and close to the head, but they aren’t protection from anything.

Those hard eggshell hunt caps were in lovely, nearly new condition, and they didn’t look as if they had ever been worn. I brought the tack sale manager’s attention to them as not true safety helmets. The decision was to keep them on the table for people who would like to use them as decor.

I am hoping to get them to throw all of the unsold “safety” helmets away, and not recycle them to the next sale. Both the battered ‘real’ safety helmets and the eggshell helmets (that don’t end up in someone’s centerpiece).

[FrittSkritt]

@JER

We’ve had ‘something catastrophic’ happen in eventing.

We’ve had so many Somethings Catastrophic that our current list on the ‘WTF Are We Doing?’ thread is already outdated.

(There were two XC schooling deaths in the US last week - and they wouldn’t even count because the deaths weren’t in competition.)

Not to mention no one is keeping a tally of the “near-misses,” e.g. those who’ve had rotational falls but neither horse nor rider died. The rotational fall rate right now is based only on competition data and/or official deaths that were reported, but I can bet that the risk is probably a lot higher than we think it is. Not sure if FEI or USEA keep track of the type of horse falls that aren’t associated with fatality or even significant rider injury. [Apologies if this has been addressed before.]

Should also mention the MR rate that’s recorded with USEA is not always accurate as well - I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen scores that show RF when the horse absolutely fell on its shoulder. Some JJ don’t know the difference, which skews the data.