THIS..... This is what will kill eventing

[enjoytheride]

If you want to ban any sort of social media criticism of a sport, then you’d not only have to ban cell phones, you’d have to ban any sort of televised footage, including the online stream every year. Then not have any sort of filmed recap. Or if you play a recap, carefully edit out any less than perfect rides or jumps.

The assumption that the officials responded to social media pressure can’t be proven unless you know an official. There have been many yellow cards or written warnings given after the fact. Or it could have been given same day and the media response was later.

I have seen social media outrage over a girl cantering her pony bareback, social media outrage covers every type of riding ever. I don’t think that we can control it, I do think we can take steps to show that our sport wants to be safe. Which I think we have.

I do think massive social media outrage of “abuse” that isn’t abuse is just as bad as massive social media outrage of social media outrage. For example, Maude’s post.

[enjoytheride]

@Thames_Pirate

What bothers me is 1) the optics, of course, and 2) the fact that it was internet chatter that caused the retroactive decision.

You have absolutely no idea that this is true. For all you know, the officials were discussing a warning before this rider even reached this fence, and debated pulling the rider up after this fence. Unless you know someone who was standing next to an official, or an official themselves, you are making this assumption with no facts. This is not the first warning that was issued after an event was over or that we just heard about. It happens all the time. They could give someone a warning same day and issue the media response later.

[Amberley]

@enjoytheride

If you want to ban any sort of social media criticism of a sport, t

No-one is talking about that. Just pointing out that social media is primarily an uninformed echo chamber and will stay that way without reasonable outreach and education. Having said that- there are many, many people paid or otherwise who do nothing but post on SM all day long 365 days a year and they do tend to drown everyone else out, no matter how insane or willfully misinformed they are.

I can’t tell you how many documentaries I’ve watched on my area of scientific expertise and just thought “yep, humans deserve to be wiped, we are morons. I hope it happens before we kill the last rhinos and tigers so nature can recover.” I had to cancel my netflix subscription.

[wanderlust]

I’ve read through this entire thread - am I so old that no one else here remembers Le Samurai? Who after stumbling, finished the course on adrenaline and then came through the finish lines with his clearly demolished leg swinging in the air? I cannot remember how long ago that was, and I can still see the horrific image plain as day in my mind. And the internet bullying and shaming she got afterwards was brutal

This is why people like Tamie Smith pull up the second they feel anything amiss. Why you take a beat and trot for a moment to ensure the horse is sound. I don’t think “well foxhunters fall all the time and get back up blah blah blah” is a good rationalization for not acting in the horse’s best interest while eventing.

You know when barrel racers are saying they are tough on their horses, but to continue after that fall would never have been tolerated in their events, you probably aren’t on the right side of things.

[Amberley]

The 90s and early 2000s were the absolute nadir of eventing for me. I walked away and so did many friends, many of whom were actively competing at prelim and above. So many horrible accidents, unsafe courses, unsafe riders and so much emphasis on making teams and being competitive. That period gutted the sport, imho.

[emeraldcity]

@Thames_Pirate

the fact that it was internet chatter that caused the retroactive decision.

It’s my understanding, confirmed by multiple people in this thread, that the warning/yellow card is issued AT THE EVENT to the rider, but the public just doesn’t see it until it makes its way to the online database a day or a few later. So, this statement is almost certainly untrue. I think many many FEI/USEF choices over many years would confirm they do not make decisions based on internet chatter

[Mounted]

@wanderlust

I’ve read through this entire thread - am I so old that no one else here remembers Le Samurai? Who after stumbling, finished the course on adrenaline and then came through the finish lines with his clearly demolished leg swinging in the air? I cannot remember how long ago that was, and I can still see the horrific image plain as day in my mind. And the internet bullying and shame she felt afterwards in no small part led to Amy Tryon eventually taking her life.

That is a gross exaggeration of the incident, but a good representation of the bullying and misinformation Amy faced. Your claims about Amy’s tragic and premature death are also inaccurate, speculative and entirely inappropriate.

[Ajierene]

@Amberley

Having said that I remember very few serious horse injuries prior to the 90s when the new courses came in. Personally I knew none at all and I lived in the heart of eventing country and knew lots of riders. It could be that I was too young to notice but the only horse death listed at Badminton online prior to 1992 is due to a heart attack.

I am using this as a jumping off point as I think we need to be careful about how we think about the past. In the past, we did not have social media, we did not have immediate coverage of sports where we can see things real time and assess for ourselves. We were seeing edited versions.

There is also the phenomena of Declinism - or seeing the past through rose-colored glasses. How many horses died that we did not know about? Who would have known the Calvins of before? If you watch the historical videos, you see royalty or Eventing royalty, yes, Shiela Wilcox is there at only 20 but she’s there as a shining star of eventing that took OVER when women were first allowed in eventing. There was a lot of uniqueness about her that made her stand out. But the male equivalent doing reasonably well at that level? Nowhere to be seen until he’s won a time or two because he’s not unique.

Look at what is written on Wikipedia about the Olympics in Mexico in 1968 - “two horse deaths” as almost a footnote. How many of those horses completed stadium the next day? How many were permanently injured? USEF/FEI didn’t really start tracking injuries and falls until around the turn of this century.

There was also a lot less emphasis on horse health and more emphasis on “toughness”. If you review some of the videos I posted and some others of historical eventing footage, you will see much worse, or potentially much worse than Calvin’s incident. The comments I heard are not in any way related to horse health/worry about horse health but toughness or bad luck - such as “isn’t that eventer tough” or “bad luck he got all the way to the 5* and had a fall”.

I remember one incident where Princess Ann got upset because she told her crew if she fell off she was done for the day. She fell off, apparently told her crew she was fine so they helped her back on, and she didn’t remember the rest of the course. She most likely said she was fine and didn’t remember the course because she had a concussion but this incident occured in the lates 70’s/early 80’s and we knew a lot less, she was never diagnosed.

I also caution looking at a horse getting up and running off as “eager to continue” because horses are prey animals and it is known that if they are scared/injuried/compromised, they tend towards wanting to run because that’s their instinct. So a horse getting up and running off is not necessarily indicative of being fine.

I will touch on Le Samurai for a moment - not to say anything negative about Amy Tryon as humans can also make mistakes with adrenaline running through them. I am speaking about the modern social media aspect of it. How many Le Samurai’s were there before we had instant access to see rides, review rides, etc.? I was talking to someone about this when it happened and she had something similar happen - her upper level event horse bowed both front tendons but she didn’t know about it until after cross country when the adrenaline cooled on both of them. But that happened before internet (and at a lower level that was less likely to be streamed) so the general public - even general horse public was not looking on. Were not able to rewind and rewatch to see what was going on. The general horse public was able to ascertain that the horse did not jump the next day BECAUSE of this. How many times in the past was the story “oh horse didn’t feel right so we didn’t jump” when it really was a catastrophic injury not a sore foot from a lost shoe?

So yes, we do need to continue to strive to do better but I think we just need to caution this perception that the “good old days” ever existed and use them to say today’s sport is on a downward spiral.

I do think most likely the best thing Calvin could have done (hindsight and all that) was to post a statement saying maybe he didn’t realize the extent of the horse fall until someone showed him the replay and then he immediately had a vet assess the horse to determine if it was good to jump the next day. But we all know better actions after the fact.

[wanderlust]

Unfortunately, it is not a gross exaggeration of the “incident.” I saw the whole thing real-time.

With that said, I’m happy to edit/soften my post re: the rest of it, but now that you’ve quoted it I am unable to do so.

I have all the empathy in the world for Amy and her family and the whole thing was all around incredibly sad. We all make mistakes, and my point stands that the repercussions from that one were incredibly tragic. Which is why riders should take the time to check on their horses after something like a fall, bad step, etc, before continuing on.

[Mounted]

@wanderlust

Unfortunately, it is not a gross exaggeration of the “incident.” I saw the whole thing real-time.

So did I. “…leg swinging in the air” is simply not true. Nor is much of the rest, and I quoted it for context because it is indicative of your inaccurate, ill-informed and judgmental speculation about of the situation.

[Ajierene]

I am going to touch on something else and that’s the concept of “toughness”. Someone in another thread mentioned an NFL player that has multiple concussions and shows signs of lingering brain injuries to the point where coaches on other teams said he should be benched. The individual in the other thread said he’s “tough” because he keeps playing.

He’s not tough…he’s cognitively impaired, he doesn’t know how else to earn a living, he feels a need to prove himself, he’s competitive and can’t stand the thought of not being on the top…something else.

I think as a society, we need to really start letting go of the idea that people that do these things are “tough”. They have a different mindset - part of Calvin’s reasoning to keep going may have been a mindset to complete the course but that doesn’t make him tough.

I caution this because “tough” is often, in society as a whole, seen as a positive, as something to aspire to. Everything from the “tough” women that helped NASA build a spacecraft to get the US to the moon to an individual pulling someone from a burning building.

Continuing to play through injury of self or others (horses, team members) is NOT tough.

For Eventing, yes it came from cavalry. the original concept of “over, through or under, as long as you get to the other side” came from the need to get away from the enemy, get the dispatch where it needs to go - the risk to life and limb if you don’t.

But there is nothing in today’s eventing that requires that. There is no “toughness” in continuing on.

I remember some people criticising Buck Davidson for pulling up his veteran 5* horse at Kentucky several years ago because the horse just “didn’t feel right”.

There were also some criticisms of individuals that scratched from Fairhill because of the deluge of rain.

The people that criticized in these two scenarios is that the particular eventers were not as “tough” or lost their “toughness”. That’s where I caution people in speaking of tough - not wanting to do something you don’t have to do does NOT mean you aren’t tough, it means you have the choice now.

The eventers back in the day weren’t “tougher” than the ones today - they were less knowledgeable .

I just wanted to touch on this because I always cringe when I see someone use the word “tough” in this regard.

[Heinz_57]

@wanderlust

And the internet bullying and shame she felt afterwards in no small part led to Amy Tryon eventually taking her life.

According to the news articles and the statement from her family, her death was determined to be an accidental overdose due to combining several medications after an injury. Are you privy to some alternative information that it was found to be intentional, or just making the leap based on the sequence of events or gossip?

[Bogie]

@endlessclimb

But the second moment where he nearly had a repeat at another fence - maybe THAT one he should have slowed up for a second and checked on his horse…

I wondered why he wasn’t held on course by the stewards. Tim Price was stopped (and then allowed to continue) because someone thought there was blood on his horse. In comparison, Phantom’s fall looked much more concerning to me and I thought he should have been examined then, but certainly after the second stumble. He has been penalized by the FEI for dangerous riding, but that came after the event was done.

[MHM]

@Ajierene

I also caution looking at a horse getting up and running off as “eager to continue” because horses are prey animals and it is known that if they are scared/injuried/compromised, they tend towards wanting to run because that’s their instinct. So a horse getting up and running off is not necessarily indicative of being fine.

I agree.

These horses are also trained over the course of years and years that their job on cross country is to keep going and look for the next jump. The horses would not be competing at the top level if they had not learned that lesson well.

So even if they are not 100%, those horses will most likely do their best to continue, since they have been conditioned to do that throughout their careers.

[Texarkana]

@Thames_Pirate

What bothers me is 1) the optics, of course, and 2) the fact that it was internet chatter that caused the retroactive decision.

I was present with the officials and I do not think #2 is true. Of course, I am just a peon and have no authority to speak on what I witnessed nor was anything explicitly discussed with me. But the riders given sanctions received a lot of official scrutiny post-XC. I have a feeling these decisions were made well in advance of when the press got ahold of the news.

[FjordBCRF]

Really, really well stated.

I too cringe when I hear being tough thrown around like a badge of honor. It’s very far off from that. It does seem to have a generational component to it as well.

[beowulf]

Thank you for saying this, Em.

[Aussie_2020]

I remember that. I remember being horrified that she didn’t pull up. I remember so many people yelling for her to stop. Amy was a wonderful person and a good horseman, but I think she was caught up in the adrenalin rush.

The OP’s last post was good, and I was nodding my head agreeing until I caught myself and said No. This sounds like that damn ‘kick on’ crap. And I believe that’s the mentality that needs to change.

Being told that the horse was doing what it loves to do always gets my eyes rolling in my head. If horses could talk I guarantee not one would say they’d love to be training and competing in any sport rather than just being a horse. It’s a mistake to say the energy of fit horses shows how much they love galloping and jumping.

But I’m not an eventer so my opinion is shite. I’m just one of many people that won’t watch racing or eventing live because they don’t want to see another horse go down.

[Texarkana]

@Aussie_2020

The OP’s last post was good, and I was nodding my head agreeing until I caught myself and said No. This sounds like that damn ‘kick on’ crap. And I believe that’s the mentality that needs to change.

Really? I didn’t take that away from it at all.

[Aussie_2020]

I wish I could “like” your post many times over!