This not new knowledge or a new perspective, but I found the article oversimplified the reason horses crash. No horse wants to crash. They do so for many reasons outside of aversion to punishment: (mental/physical) fatigue and misreading the fence are, IMO, the biggest reasons.
It’s been said before by UL riders that they prefer a horse who refuses versus stops. Many riders do want independent thinking in their horse and recognize its the horse that jumps the fence, not them. The first implies the horse didn’t read the question, doesn’t think it’s safe, or doesn’t think they can - the latter usually comes from lack of confidence, presence of pain, or “dunwanna”.
The video of Raphael at Pau, his reins were broken and I think that the person writing this article either doesn’t understand eventing or maybe, doesn’t know much about eventing training. They mention the “large gap” as if it should be self-evident that a horse should go under or through it… but this isn’t how modern courses are made and its certainly not how modern horses are trained. The fences trend towards visually staggering and often are placed in areas where there appear to be “multiple” outs to a casual observer. The horses are trained to ignore these outs and focus on finding the next fence. Raphael did exactly that - the thing he focused on visually looked like a fence. I don’t think he ever thought it was anything else - and I agree, maybe in his confidence he thought it was brush or something that gives away. Either way, that is one honest horse. I think he must have thought that was a bank up, maybe with brush on it - and it does raise the question about setting up decorations on course that share similar construction or material to fences. And also brings up the question of fences trending towards decorations - the duplicity there might confuse horses.
