I worked with a woman in Middleburg who was at the stable where he trained and she said that the horse was a notorious dirty stopper. If you saw the video of him galloping you would see Reeve was terrified and rode like he was terrified, stiff as a board with a death grip on the reins. Even if the horse was not a dirty stopper that would have unhinged all but the most courageous of horses.
My friends, my opinion (from about 50 years of riding anything from utter crap to nice horses) things can happen. It really does not matter how good or bad a rider you are. It would be comforting to think that because he was tall, a novice, jumped up the neck, whatever, that the accident occurred. But my opinion is that it has nothing to do with those factors. It was his time, that’s all.
I would have to agree with Calamber. I was there that day when he fell, leaving from my fence judging job, and when I heard he was on course I stopped to watch him jump the two fences before the one where he fell. I used to event many years ago (from my 20’s to my 40’s) - it didn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize not only an unhappy horse (ears, attitude, and not going “forward”), but a rider that was far, far, FAR too large (size wise) for the animal, plus riding in a very bad “perched” position, WAY over his horse’s neck, all bent over from the waist. His back was actually roached.
I remember watching as the horse jumped the first fence in my view - it did OK, but it was a view coming at me, head on, so not much to tell about the approach. As he rode past me, I noticed he never got out of that perch over the horse’s neck. I continued watching as the horse came to the second fence in my view in a very hesitant “backward” manner, stuttered up to the base of the jump and sorta crowhopped it with ears going flat to the head. It looked every inch a horse that would stop given an inch. The rider went with the awkward flow, but it was uncomfortable to watch because he was visually top heavy over the horse’s front end. Very uncomfortable. Had I stood and watched the next fence, I would have seen the fall. But just watching the two I had was enough for me. I turned and walked away, shaking my head, wondering who had mounted him on that animal, and who the heck was teaching him. IMO they were doing a poor job, or…he just wasn’t a rider.
It was only a minute or so later I heard the loudspeaker announce his fall, which didn’t surprise me in the least. I stopped for a second, then turned and kept walking towards my car. He was a fall waiting to happen. I left the park and headed home, never knowing that fall was one that ended his career, and later his life.
But that image of him and that unhappy horse jumping the fence just prior plays like a movie in my head, crystal clear, even after so many years.
What happened to him sucked, and honestly, he dealt with it in the best way he could have. So while I think it is easy and convenient to criticize the man, perhaps the more important issue is how he dealt with a devastating injury with grace and courage. He spoke a few years ago at my company’s annual conference, and I can tell you, he had the audience in tears. He was a class act.
[QUOTE=KBC;7734333]
Mmmm isn’t she using the ‘s’ as showing possession, the bio belonging to Chris Reeve?
In which case the name is correct but is the punctuation should there be a ’ appearing at some point?[/QUOTE]
Well at least start by capitalizing the dang thang!
[QUOTE=Ibex;7733646]
There are actually some various ideas about that. ^^ If you search the Eventing forum, there’s been significant conversation about him riding at Training, the horse, and the incident as a whole.
And it wasn’t the reins - his hands came up and got tangled in the bridle. That part of the fall was a fluke at least - common consensus is that regardless of the root cause, he should have had a broken arm or collarbone, not his spine.[/QUOTE]
THIS. There were MANY trainers, including some of the most respected clinicians out there, who IMPLORED that man to get a different horse, drop back to a more basic level, stop letting his ego write checks his skills couldn’t cash. He ignored ALL of them on his way to giving the world a wake-up call about what the Worst Case Scenario really looks like. People I knew well were personally involved and there WAS a lot of talk that Mr. Reeve unfortunately chose to defy good advice and common sense.
It became “his time” when his luck ran out with riding for a fall.
So damn, condemn him forever after and feel good about yourselves for being so perfect? Not to wank on about this, but people do make mistakes. They deal with them, generally, and I think in this case he did. What is the point of calling him out for thinking he was riding at a higher level?
[QUOTE=Calamber;7734633]
I worked with a woman in Middleburg who was at the stable where he trained and she said that the horse was a notorious dirty stopper. If you saw the video of him galloping you would see Reeve was terrified and rode like he was terrified, stiff as a board with a death grip on the reins. Even if the horse was not a dirty stopper that would have unhinged all but the most courageous of horses.[/QUOTE]
Chris kept Buck at my family’s farm the winter before his accident because we have an indoor and because of his desire to work with a jumping coach for a few months. I watched him school many times, so I am not relying on gossip I heard from someone I once worked with. Buck was not a “notorious dirty stopper” and Chris was a confident, passionate rider and horseman. His accident was an accident.
Hasn’t a thing to do with me, you, or how anybody else rides or “feels” about it. The facts of the circumstances spoke for themselves at the time, as others above have stated, even an eyewitness for heaven’s sake.
No one is “condemning” anyone. The man dealt with the life that was left to him after that one hideous mistake with more grace, dignity and courage than any one person in a hundred thousand can ordinarily muster.
None of which changes the set of circumstances as to WHY the wreck happened, and that is a matter of history encapsulating a strong cautionary tale.
Period.
My recollection was that there wasn’t a clear ground line on the fence, so if the rider was inaccurate or imprecise, the horse couldn’t “read” the fence. Not really a fair question for training level (actually, the same fence was included on the Novice course, it wasn’t even a Training maximum height.), after his accident, you saw a lot more brush and straw bales under fences, and false ground lines being more of an upper level question.
Chris Reeve was a big guy, 6’4" and around 200#. In the videos of the fall that I saw, the horse stopped abruptly and the rider catapulted over the fence. His stick got tangled in the reins so he couldn’t put his arms out, and he became a yard dart, hitting the ground head first at about a 45 degree angle. A smaller rider might have been less seriously injured, in his case the forces pulverized two of his cervical vertebra. If he were smaller, if he could have gotten his hands out to break his fall or if he had been going slower, the result would have been different.
I confess I didn’t pay a lot of attention to him at events; he was just a big good looking amateur guy. I didn’t have an impression of him being over mounted or competing above his level. However, I was concentrating on my own horses and riding or my own students. He would have had to be pretty egregious for me to take note, and he wasn’t. There were certainly more noticeable mismatches competing at the same time.
[QUOTE=annashulltz;7733667]
I actually knew someone who saw his accident. He was really far ahead of the motion and may have jumped ahead?[/QUOTE]
I saw many pictures of CR riding, both before and during the accident. CR was entirely too tall for size of the horse. When he went forward over a jump, his head was already at the horse’s ears, even if he was not jumping ahead of his horse (although in pictures of the incident, he appeard to be – pictures made it look like the horse might have chipped and CR went forward anyway.) So it is not hard to see that his hands could get tangled in the headstall.
The sad thing, as has been noted, was that his fall was not a scary one. It was not a rotational fall, nor was he stepped on. He slid down the horse’s neck and, in a freaky turn of fate, he broke his back. Many others would have bounced back up with few, if any, injuries.
[QUOTE=Tonkafriend;7733779]
You’re reading his bio and you haven’t noticed that his last name is actually Reeve?[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=KBC;7734333]Mmmm isn’t she using the ‘s’ as showing possession, the bio belonging to Chris Reeve?
In which case the name is correct but is the punctuation should there be a ’ appearing at some point?[/QUOTE]
I do recognize that OP may have been posting from a cell phone and just let the errors stay because it was a hassle to fix them, but since she announced that she is reading the biography for school I couldn’t control myself… Must… comment…:
OP, please fix your thread title. You have three errors in nine words…
So Im reading the Christopher reeves bio for school
-
I am contracts to I’m.
-
Pick one: “I’m reading the Christopher Reeve bio” or “I’m reading Christopher Reeve’s bio.”
-
Proper nouns are capitalized. It should be Reeve, not reeve.
While you’re at it, why not be wild and just capitalize the whole thing like it deserves, being a title and all?
“So I’m Reading the Christopher Reeve Bio for School”
Wow, lots of talk about an old topic. Ill admit I’m defensive, because I knew the horse, knew Chris slightly, and knew the circumstances by which he came to buy him. I’ve heard a lot of this stuff before, usually from people with no firsthand knowledge. So ill restate what I know.
The horse: was a very experienced event horse, successful through the Intermediate level with an amateur rider, and he was 17 hands. Close coupled, yes, but 17 hands. I’m 6’0 tall, so I know he was tall and big barreled. Because I rode him. In my experience, he was the opposite of a dirty stopper–the first time I rode him I hadn’t ridden in months, and he packed my rusty a$$ around a 3’6 course with very little help from yours truly. He was forward, and could be strong, but was the epitome of a bold TB eventer, not remotely crazy, dirty or anything else.
The rider: I met Chris when he was filming Village of the Damned and was riding at my barn. He had planned to bring his horse, who I believe was named Denver, who he had competed at Training level for a year or two, but just prior the horse had done a suspensory, so he left him in NY and came looking to buy. He had one on trial that he liked, but it didn’t vet, so he brought Bucket in on trial, and after 6 weeks vetted him and a bought him. Because I had ridden the horse previously he sought out my opinion, which was very flattering and kind. He struck me as a dedicated, focused rider. He was tall and top heavy, and, just like every rider in the world, was prone to jumping up the neck. But he was a good rider, and had been riding for years and fox hunted whenever possible. I never sensed any ego from him, he loved and babied his horses, and he was aware if his deficits as a rider. When I knew him, he rode 5 days a week, and most of those were lessons. The match between horse and rider was good, and he worked very hard to improve.
Now, it was 2ish years between the time I knew him/them and the accident. I have no idea what happened in between or what the state of horse and rider was leading up to the accident. Certainly anything could have happened. But before you start spewing “facts” maybe take a second to think about what you actually know, and what you think you know. Throwing Chris or Buck under the bus is distasteful in the extreme, especially because the severity of the injury compared to the fall was a total fluke.
It seems like every few years one of these pops up, and I get the joy of reading about what an awful horse it was, or how badly he sucked as a rider, YadaYada. You know what I think? I think it’s a bunch of BS to make us feel better about ourselves. If you can blame his circumstance on a bad horse, or his ego, or lack of skill, then certainly that means it won’t happen to you right? I mean clearly you’re well mounted, and perfectly skilled, so you’ll never end up like that, right? You just keep telling yourself that.
He fell off in a way that hundreds of people fall off every damn day. And walk away from. He lost the lottery. Period. It could be any one of us. Period.
Let me tell you, for the next many years my coach was extremely aggressive about correcting people who jumped ahead. “No one gets hurt falling off the horse’s butt.”[/QUOTE]
A good friend of mine broke her back badly, coming off the back of a horse. Although that kind of fall is less common, it seems to me, from anecdotal evidence, that % of falls by going over the head are more likely to end “well” that a fall by sliding off the back end of a horse.
Thank you so much for posting that, Phoenix!
I was not as close to the situation as you, but what was being said just didn’t jibe with my recollections AT ALL.
I remember a competent, dedicated amateur, well mounted.
I do remember that because of his size, a little tip forward = a lot more unbalanced than for smaller riders.
I viewed his accident as a “There but for the grace of God go I.” Immediately after, my sibs got together and bought me a body protector. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that Chris Reeve had been wearing a body protector and a good helmet, and it didn’t help. I believe he shattered C4 and C5. (4th and 5th cervical vertebrae.)
[QUOTE=BarnField;7734213]
oh please, go Google “William Fox-Pitt”[/QUOTE]
Having been a previous resident of Eventland I know who Fox-Pitt is and have seen him ride in person. He’s a professional rider who does not put his body in bad places while jumping. I’ve also cliniced with Boyd Martin, who is 6’+ as well, and he also keeps himself over the horse very well. If you must ride smaller horses at that height (and they do, as that’s their job) you really, really must be cognizant of what your upper body is doing. A rider of that height on a too-small horse is no one’s ideal situation.
I’ve never read his autbiography. Can someone please explain how he got his hands all tangled? Peteypie, if you find correcting grammar so fascinating, maybe you should be on a grammar forum. There are many grammatical errors on this forum. It’s not just the OP. Are you going to correct everyone else as well?
As far as the accident, it was an ACCIDENT.
As far as this thread, something weird going on here. Three of the first four posters are “training level” and joined within a month of each other. That is true of the person who posted just above this post.
Either all the kids in the class joined (a year ago) to do their research together, or somebody is trying to cook something up.
I can assure you that I’m not affiliated with Amanda or any other of the training level people on here. I actually started riding again in August 2013. The trainer at my barn told me it was great site for riders seeking advice. How exactly does that make me or any of the other training level people affiliated with Amanda? I’d be happy to give you my phone number, and you can check for yourself. I’m sure none of the other people are from Nebraska.
[QUOTE=Cindyg;7734881]
As far as the accident, it was an ACCIDENT.
As far as this thread, something weird going on here. Three of the first four posters are “training level” and joined within a month of each other. That is true of the person who posted just above this post.
Either all the kids in the class joined (a year ago) to do their research together, or somebody is trying to cook something up.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=wendyfisher;7734897]
I can assure you that I’m not affiliated with Amanda or any other of the training level people on here. I actually started riding again in August 2013. The trainer at my barn told me it was great site for riders seeking advice. How exactly does that make me or any of the other training level people affiliated with Amanda? I’d be happy to give you my phone number, and you can check for yourself. I’m sure none of the other people are from Nebraska.[/QUOTE]
No no! No need to be defensive. It’s just something I noticed. Everybody has to be training level sometime. 
But three out of four (at the beginning of the thread) is a little weird for this board.
Sorry to include you!
