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.
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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 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Thank you for saying this, Em.
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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.
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Really? I didn’t take that away from it at all.
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I wish I could “like” your post many times over!
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Ok - but some actually really do. Some are even competitive w/ others.
Just as an example:
Long time ago, a friend of mine and I were on our two OTTBs out for a hack on a nice wide lane. We picked up a canter - just to canter. I could feel my mare size up the competition - she actually pinned her ears. Her horse did the same. Pretty soon we were going way way faster than either of us, the riders, actually wanted to go. It was pretty funny and it took us a bit to rein them back in. It was a horsey throw-down.
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I’ve been lurking on this thread w/o commenting - I started following eventing around 2011-12 as a fan & aspiring eventer (when I still had horses in my life consistently) and have learned (some) of it’s history just from trying to be a total horse knowledge sponge in that era. Not going to pretend to be an expert and I’ve refrained from chiming in b/c I don’t feel I have much to contribute, didn’t see the incident itself, don’t want to deal with the headache of people thinking they know everything trying to shout others down online, and know when I don’t have the knowledge needed to contribute.
But while lurking, I saw this and want to say thank you for this thoughtful post.
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On the point of toughness. I consider myself tough and my horses also pretty tough because I’ve built their “toughness” through years of long, slow training and conditioning. To me that means things like they can walk, trot, canter 50+ miles safely, soundly and feel still ready to go at the end. What it does NOT mean to me is that they should continue on stoically through an injury. And I hope to all that is holy, that I recognize the difference. But I do what I do for fun- 10+ years ago, I decided to step away from the professional horse world because I honestly didn’t like the direction so much of it was going in. The pressure to be perfect was unreal, esp with deep pocket owners that thought $$ should be able to dictate how fast/ well a horse did in training and competition. So I guess what I’m saying is that would I have pulled up? Yes because I am uber sensitive about such things. But do I understand why that rider didn’t pull up? Also yes. And if the horse was fine, deemed sound and went on to finish the event then I suppose that one can pull out the old all’s well that ends well.
In reality, we can look at every aspect of what we do with horses under the microscope of should we do this. But who gets to draw the line of what is okay and what isn’t? I’m not talking about 100% blatantly obvious abuse. Who gets to say that going around a 3* is fine but a 5* isn’t or a 1.3 m jumper class is okay but puissance is a no go?
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Yes!
What is “fine” in one person’s eyes might be seen as completely wrong to someone else.
And when we try to make a concrete definition for “right” and “wrong,” we hit a lot of gray areas that do not fit perfectly into either category.
I do not have the personality (or talent lol) for upper level competition myself. But the fact that upper level competition exists benefits me as a non-competitive horse person. Without competition, there isn’t much to drive equine research and welfare. Without competition, we wouldn’t have the variety we see in the horse world. There would be no incentive to improve/create “breeds,” there would be no incentive to improve/create styles of riding, etc. There would be no incentive to advance medicine, farriery, nutrition…
But competition ultimately brings out the worst in a small percentage of people. So how do we address that fact fairly while preserving competition? That’s the big question.
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