So sad for her! Rotten luck.
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And what if he wasn’t? I think he got very, very lucky here.
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We’re all pretty lucky when we cross the finish line in good form.
Unless we reformat that sport entirely beyond recognition, there will be rides that aren’t as foot perfect as we expect to see at the level.
Personally, I’m more concerned about the overall lack of fitness across the board and the amount of horses in the 4* that couldn’t jump out of stride - that’s a bigger threat than a scrappy rider that’s so familiar with his horse he was able reorganize and finish out positively.
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We all get lucky every time we sit on our horses.
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She posted yesterday that she also had to put down a beloved dog. Man what a tough week for her and her team.
This column popped up in my Facebook memories today.
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What do you mean by lack of fitness? There were a few horses that pulled up due to being tired, which there always are but I thought this field was looking pretty good fitness wise based on the show jump. Not a single horse had a CR or a yard sale in the show jump which imo is indicative of rider who have done their job getting their horses fit.
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So – back to the original premise of this thread. The thread title.
It is not unusual that those immersed in any sport have a hard time seeing what it looks like to the casual observer. House-blind, barn-blind, we just don’t see things that have become normal to us, as others see them.
This thread was posted - some concern was expressed - but then! In this thread, the FB page putting out the alert was given a good bit of discredit, basically accused of trolling.
Oh! OK! If it’s just trolls posting on FB, forget it. Cancel the emergency. Close the case.
But – that misses the entire point. It doesn’t really matter who is making the videos go viral – what matters is that they are being seen. And shared, and exclaimed over. By a larger public beyond the trolls.
Re the thread title, eventing isn’t dying of anything at the moment. That video will fade into oblivion soon enough.
Except that it is out there, and yes it looks awful, to many supporters as well as random strangers. And nothing changed as a result.
It’s going to be used along with other less-than-stellar moments to paint this Olympic sport as abusive and indifferent to animal welfare. It will be pointed out that the eventing cognoscenti brushed it off, gave a minor infraction of some kind, did nothing to make any changes on behalf of horses landing on their bellies and then being pushed to carry on.
See the point? That it happened, it’s out there, and eventing didn’t react very much, does matter. It goes on a pile of other things that matter. How high is the pile at any given time? How many incidents of recent vintage are in the pile?
When such situations come up, eventing tends to go turtle. Tuck the head into the shell so as not to see the outside world that might be a teeny bit scary. Communicate only with other eventers who are equally unconcerned. A common human reaction.
But hopefully wise heads in the eventing universe do maintain awareness that there is a public out there. A public that can reach in and put its hand on eventing – if the public feels sufficiently motivated. That it is well to divert and diffuse such motivations. Because the motivation will come from inside of eventing, if it should come to that.
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I feel like Eventing has made more changes to itself to improve safety and public approval (for lack of a better word) than any other equestrian discipline i can think of.
I don’t feel like it goes turtle. The fact that I can’t actually remember the last time I saw screens brought out in Lexington is huge to me. About ten years ago (or more) I wasn’t sure I could keep going to Rolex even though I live here and Rolex was the reason we visited here in the first place many years ago.
I’ve no doubt we will see the fall rule modified.
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Because it is a timed 1 phase event. Every second counts and if your horse goes down, you’ve already lost. Barrel races also shoot their horses up with coke and other drugs to get them to run fast and out of control and tie themselves to the saddle. I don’t think we should be praising barrel racers as the model to mirror
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What? The poster, wanderlust, wasn’t praising barrel racers, they were pointing out that if barrel racers (which you seem to agree are on the crazy side) think the fall was bad enough to stop, then it’s pretty bad.
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That isn’t how I read what was written. I read it that barrel racers will pull up after their horse falls and not continue the pattern because they are worried about their horse ( and having run barrels and worked with some barrel people in my younger days-
This isn’t the case- horse welfare isn’t always the forefront )
Lazy side? I don’t know where you got that from
My comment.
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Crazy not lazy, I don’t know where you got that from my comment.
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This is why I love you, Em!!!
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LOVE YOU too!!! Miss all my eventing friends. Life kind of at a cross roads. Have to see what my horses, and family, hold this year.
Fingers crossed we find all the positives.
Em
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I’m currently living in Australia and watched some of the Adelaide 5* livestream.
Some of the riders at Adelaide make even the scary riders at Rolex all look like Michael Jung. There is a very, very different attitude here toward what consists of effective and safe riding. Honestly, I sometimes feel as if I’m watching eventing from the 70s/80s where getting around XC without falling once was considered a “good ride.”
The lack of concern over dangerous riding down in Australia is pretty abhorrent. The Ground Juries (who are frequently FEI level) tend to turn a blind eye. I’m amazed that we don’t have nearly as many fatalities as we should. It also explains why the serious riders find a different continent to train on, because the bar is set quite low.
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Everyone, if you have general questions about what happens “behind the scenes” at an event, tomorrow I am a guest on RideIQs “Ask the Expert” podcast.
I’m happy to answer general questions about procedures, protocol, etc.
Cyndi
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I just listened to a podcast with Boyd Martin the other day, and he was talking about an event that I think was in Australia where he said he had two rotational falls on the cross country course, and still got back on both times and finished the course.
Granted, it sounded like it must have been a while ago, so maybe the rules were different then. But still.
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You missed my point entirely, yet also made it for me.
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It’s interesting. Adelaide was very different, to be sure. And I, too, was struck by the difference in styles between the average rider at Adelaide vs. the average rider at Kentucky. It was a hell of a good competition to watch if you wanted to see an excellent case for frangible technology in the sport - in addition to many generally deserved pins, at least one instance of a horse leaving both front legs fully behind over an upright gate (which thankfully deployed as intended, and they continued on). A friend was around while I was watching (she knows the rules but doesn’t ride) and her exact words were “that’s got to be more than 11 penalties” (it wasn’t).
That being said, I think there are some rose coloured glasses on here. Someone upthread commented that they were surprised that Michael Jung seemed to thrilled with Calvin at the finish, and in the comment I’ve quoted here you said Adelaide made the scary riders in Kentucky “look like Michael Jung”. But I think we forget that Michael Jung didn’t always ride like Michael Jung. In fact, when he was younger, he rode quite a lot like Calvin. In a COTH Kentucky review that I cannot find for the life of me, Jimmy Wofford commented that Michael got to the top of the last hill at Kentucky with fischerRocana, threw the reins at her, and “if he had missed even once, we would still be scraping him up off the floor”. But he didn’t, so he won.
To be clear, this is not meant to be a criticism of Michael. He is a genius on a horse and his round at Kentucky was spectacular. We are all looking up to him, and we darn well should be. But to think about how he rides now, I do think we have to consider how he got there. He got there by riding forward. Always. All the time. Even when he shouldn’t. Forward. We see that style in Calvin and in many riders at Adelaide, and when they don’t have the polish of someone who’s come up through that system and then out the other side, like Michael Jung or Shane Rose, we think they look scary. And they do. As someone who personally tends to ride a little backwards, I know I am highly unlikely to look like Calvin or some of the riders at Adelaide. But I also know I’m unlikely to ever look like Michael Jung or Shane Rose or Harry Meade out there, either. And if you want to look like that latter group, I’m not sure you can avoid looking like the former, at least for a bit. A conundrum.
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