[QUOTE=frugalannie;5344056]
Safety John, thanks for looking at this, and IFG, she one’s smart lady who would be a great assset to your investigations. (As well as many others who post here: Reed, JER, Gnep, etc.).[/QUOTE]
Annie, I am blushing. I am more than happy to review any research proposals. Though I am afraid that until the summer, I am too over-extended to do any analyses myself.
I would also include catastrophic accidents even if the rider was not killed. Christopher Reeve’s accident occurred on cross country.
I am 40ish and did eventing in my high school years (called Combined Training at the lower levels back then). I now have 2 children, and last year between them they incurred 3 concussions in 6 months. My son had one in baseball (hit in head with a hard thrown ball), then my daughter incurred one in soccer (head to head contact at high speed), and then my son incurred another one in football. Needless to say, he is done with football, lacrosse, wrestling, etc. Only baseball for him now, and with extreme care for possible injuries.
These events thrust me into the topic of head injuries and concussions. I urge anyone in sports or with children in sports to utilize the IMPACT program to be prepared for assessing a concussion. www.impacttest.com Despite an improvement of physical symptoms, cognitive functioning usually takes much longer and yet must be resolved before one can function capably at school or work - and certainly before risking a second impact in sports. Impact testing is a wonderful tool, but prevention is the best thing of all. THERE is NO such thing as a concussion proof helmet in ANY sport!! And please spread the word, one does NOT need to lose consciousness to suffer a concussion. “Having your bell rung”, with new understanding of this injury and new paradigms of concussion diagnosis and managment, is not ok and is serious.
I would LOVE to return to riding if I win the lottery, but I would do so with SUCH care and attention to head protection at all times (Courtney King Dye’s injury should have woken up everyone to this issue - even while working around hind legs where a kick to the head could be devastating). I say this because I only wore a helmet for jumping, and it was a mere velvet covered shell with a single elastic throat band. The ones I wore in events were much better (harness), except for the dressage helmet with no strap for appearances sake.
Having read Change Your Brain, Change Your Body, I learned that your brain is somewhere between jello and egg whites in consistency.
Do not misunderstand me - I LOVE eventing! I am just trying to add to the efforts to “Paul Revere” the evening community as to the seriousness of this topic. The Evening Nation summary of this weekend’s head safety seminar is fabulous!
Lastly, when I was 12 I was thrown from a horse while in the indoor ring, and apparently hit the wall head first. I have no idea if I was wearing a helmet or if it did any good. I have a blank spot in my memory for 4+ hours - everything before the event, the accident itself, and the 2-3 hours afterward. I was awake and talking all throughout apparently. I now have memory issues that the above book has me REALLY believing are attributable to what was a severe head injury. I would do anything to take back my concussion or those of my children. If you suffer from migraines, be especially careful - a concussion is much harder, longer, and difficult to recover from…
We all need to value, treasure, and protect our brains and those of our children.
[QUOTE=Ranger;5344592]
I would also include catastrophic accidents even if the rider was not killed. Christopher Reeve’s accident occurred on cross country. [/QUOTE]
Chris Reeve died from complications of his injuries from the XC accident.
This is also true of Debbie Atkinson, who died in October 2008, two years after sustaining a serious C-2 injury on an Intermediate course in KY. More here.
Roberta Scioscia was competing prelim at FENCE- she was a few riders ahead of me, and a friend. I believe her horse refused and she was thrown into the fence, but I might be wrong.
[QUOTE=TB or not TB?;3083535]
First, who peed in your cornflakes? :eek::eek::eek: Never did I say that eventing hasn’t changed or improved over the years, and honestly, I don’t understand why this thread offends you so much.
The facts actually aren’t that easy to find, contrary to popular belief. FEI statistics only cover events at * level or above, and not all FEI sanctioned events even report their statistics back to the FEI, so there are holes in their data as it is.
Furthermore, while many accidents are investigated on a case-by-case basis, there are almost no studies that look at overriding trends in rider deaths. The rotational fall is a pretty basic element that has been identified, but there are so many more similarities that it’s mind boggling that no one has identified them before.
And here’s what I plan to do about it: use the scientific process to actually STUDY accidents and identify factors and trends that contribute. Once these are identified, I plan to create a multi-pronged approach on how to counteract some of those common factors. For instance, everyone focuses on how to prevent rotational falls; while this is admirable, I intend to look at why rotational falls are statistically more fatal now than they used to be (according to the FEI’s 2006 safety report). As has been identified, the speed at which jumps is approached is often a contributing factor. I intend to calculate the physics equation that will tell us exactly what range of speeds are lethal in a rotational fall.
The final step will be creating a presentation for the USEA, USEF, and FEI, as well as publishing the findings of the experiment in notable eventing related media.
Oh, and here’s why I need COTHers - because as has already been pointed out, not all the deaths are reported to the FEI and many studies use ONLY their statistics as data. When I have the deceased’s name, I can find out what happened to him or her. Many of the names mentioned on this thread were not looked at by the FEI. So yeah, I think I WILL continue to utilize this forum, but thanks for your concern.
Oh, and as a last note, unlike notable members of the “Safety Committee,” I don’t have a dog in this fight. An impartial observer is a must in true science.[/QUOTE]
Additionally, there are no reported statistics for the injuries. That category could be limited to career ending. It seems that it would skew things a bit to report all injuries, unless there is a scale for types/recovery length or something to distinguish it from the garden variety type of injury that will heal quickly and is non career ending for horse and rider. Both have to be taken into account. Issues with horse injuries could be used as a red flag marker before it involved the rider if you understand my meaning.
I also think that anytime someone thinks they can no longer ask questions or a discussion/investigation is squelched or foreshortened so as to only collect superficial data, that the needed changes will never come. Everyone should be open to the full scope of the story, from the nagging doubts of the rider who subsequently fell or was injured, to the conditioning programs. If the intent is not to allow full disclosure then surely something is not being addressed. Hence the need for this kind of discussion as sad as it may become to some. Look at it from the standpoint of saving your loved ones and yourself from unnecessary harm. This is a very appropriate and well needed discourse. Thank you to the OP for opening up “the can of worms”.
[QUOTE=EventingSafety John;5343713]
Gnep, yes it is a different game.
But what surprised me is that the number of deaths hasn’t really changed since the short format came into play in 2004. Considering the are way more people (more starts at least) eventing today than there were in the early 2000’s, in real terms the number of fatalities seems to have gone down.[/QUOTE]
John, the jump and course design have changed.
In the US, you will not find anymore the rough and tumble footing, terrain features are smoothed out or designed, even at the lowest level.
Jump design overall takes the survivability into account, the majority of the jumps are designed and built with a possible accident in mind. That is a development of the last 10 years.
Yes there are examtions, Red Hill for example.
I bet you a case of beer, that if one makes a statistic about crashes, befor short format and past short format based on entries you will find more crashes past but less dead riders.
Than you can not compare US with UK, France, Germany and so on, because the standards on the national level are so differant.
Collection of the data is itself a challenge. Once collected, do you look at accidents by severity, level, type of fence, long format vs short format, footing conditions,etc.?
If the number of severe accidents/accident rate is essentially unchanged from the period before changing jump construction & format - are the right questions being asked as to what leads to the accident?
I am not a statistician nor anything but the lowest level weekend rider however I wonder if each member of the USEA should, as a condition of membership (honor system here) read the results of such an analysis (if completed) so as to have a better understanding of not just the risks, but the factors that contribute to these significant life ending/changing accidents.
I realize this post will probably seem naive however working in industry I routinely have to read about accidents & near misses and analysis of the causes as as to prevent or minimize recurrence.
I’ll probably get run off this thread for my questions which are unfortunately not answers or solutions but my thoughts, FWIW.
Thoughtful post gldprimr.
I had a temp office job at a plant where a worker lost his life. The company shut down the line, kept everyone in the plant until the grief counselors arrived, and brought in investigators.
The plant remained closed until the investigation was completed some 2-4 days later. Then everyone and I mean everyone was escorted into the plant for a full explanation of how the machinery worked, what the individual job required, what they understood to have happened, what safety steps they believed the individual ignored and the steps they were implementing to avoid this happening again.
Of course do not expect a ‘personal’ response such as this, BUT a written explanation could be helpful. Also include, if applicable, lessons learned for the organizer, course designer, fence builder, officials, Rider and/or trainer.
[QUOTE=gldprimr;5345667]
C
I realize this post will probably seem naive however working in industry I routinely have to read about accidents & near misses and analysis of the causes as as to prevent or minimize recurrence.
I’ll probably get run off this thread for my questions which are unfortunately not answers or solutions but my thoughts, FWIW.[/QUOTE]
Not by a long shot. Many of us here are researchers, scientist so we advocate exactly what you are saying! I am a member of the Colorado School of Mines Safety Committee as well as out departmental safety committee. There are some great accidents we investigate (leave it to grad students and newbie undergrads to come up with new ways to destroy, injure etc.).
Reed
I believe it is certain that there were 5 in 1999, that is what gave rise to the first safety committee and is widely cited.
Following this discussion. There are two riders who we watched at horse trials in the past who we always thought were unsafe on cross country. Two riders who relied on their (expensive/well trained) horses too much for the riders’ skill level. The horses were generous and gave everything. They jumped when they should have stopped. The riders were often ahead or behind the jump motion. Both of those riders are now dead. One on the cross country course and another in a horse related schooling accident. I have no interest in a sport where you can tell a rider will someday die doing it. I well remember watching one of them go Prelim and saying “that rider is going to die doing that someday”. Never again.
It is incredibly disheartening to read back through this thread and realize most of the posts are 9!! Years old and sound like they were written yesterday. So what has changed. Wait, at least we have banned the barbaric practices of trimming muzzle hairs and those medieval French link bits.
My thoughts exactly. When will enough horses and riders have died for serious action to be taken? I saw a clip of the professional on FB exhorting his fellow eventing enthusiasts to self fund safety equipment, since apparently the national federation can’t or won’t. I just can’t wrap my head around that.
But do you know if you, or anyone, every spoke to them about the concerns?
Em
Nobody can say we never saw these issues coming. I forgot about this conversation.
Probably because there’s been far too many of these conversations.
Yep. The conversations were held. They changed trainers, bought more expensive horses and kept on going until the end. When I read the other COTH thread last week it was about 11 pages long. It’s now 42 pages long. I hope real change will happen this time. It’s long overdue.
Ugh reading this thread is making me ill. Some of the people mentioned aren’t even on the list in the other thread so it just goes to show how available and out there the info is - truth is, it isn’t. Sad that us keyboard warriors have to do all the leg work to help prevent us from dying on course.
I see literally nothing has changed in over 10 years. It is easy to see why so many ULRs are not bothered, so many of them have lost horses on course and carried on just fine.
In ten years from now people will be wondering what happened to eventing and we will all know what happened and that the powers that be willfully sat back and ignored it. The sport will die because of fatalities, it is just a matter of time.
I’m done eventing for now. I can not in good conscious support a sport that has no regard for its very participants safety. Unacceptable.
I am heading to the jumper and dressage ring this summer, my horses and my life are worth more than the glory of a clear XC round.
On the USEA podcast, Rob Burk said that there are “experts” at USEF that compile all of the TD accident reports and then apparently report out on findings.
The TD accident reports are supposed to be mailed to the following address:
Mail: Competitions Report Analyst United States Equestrian Federation 4001 Wing Commander Way Lexington, KY 40511 Ӣ
Faxed: (859) 231-6662, c/o Competitions Report Analyst
Emailed: reports@usef.org
WHO is this competitions report analyst(s) and what are they doing? I would assume that a database much like you all are suggesting does exist on this person’s desk…
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