Absolutely gutted over this. He was truly one of the greats. I’m really wondering if the changes in footing on courses are more problematic than originally thought. This has been a bad year for Eventing.
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Maybe it’s artifact due to social media spreading things widely minutes after they happen rather than reading about them in print at some later date, but to me, it seems like there are more truly catastrophic injuries (ie the type leading to immediate euthanasia, rather than just being season-ending or upper-level-career limiting) happening galloping on the flat these days compared to a few decades ago … whereas the number of bad falls doesn’t necessarily seem greater, that seems more like an issue of us being less “accepting” of it as part of horse sports.
Is it real, or my imagination? If real, is it because horses are competing a lot more than they used to? Is it because the type of horse competing at the upper levels has changed? Is it because without the long format there’s less slow, bone-and-soft tissue strengthening conditioning work being done? Is it because courses have more technical twists and turns leading to more torque forces on legs? I wish we had answers…
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Ros has been pretty open about the fact that she had backed off his training quite a bit. I don’t know what happened, but fitness isn’t just cardio, it’s bone and soft tissue, too, and you can only back off so much before you create vulnerabilities there. And he wasn’t the horse for this course; she was open about that too.
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I’m so incredibly sorry for Ros Canter, an incredible horsewoman who adored that horse. They rose to the top of the rankings, and it was remarkable to see such a tiny person piloting such a massive animal to such great feats of athletic strength.
I think we need more information before we discuss the “whys” and “hows,” though.
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I think this is really hard to tell, because the sport has changed so much, the accuracy of record-keeping has changed so much, and so forth, it’s hard to determine “how much worse” things are. I do have to say that some runs (like at the Mexican Olympics, and even some old footage I saw of some events in the 90s held in absolute sucking slop) from the past look pretty awful and statistically are pretty damning.
I think all the sport can do is to START keeping better tabs and more accurate tabs NOW, rather than looking to the past, and reevaluate every year NOW where the problems are, from schooling to 5* events.
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Yes I was more just thinking out loud.
Fact is even with all these possible factors it seems this year the risk between life and death is exceedingly thin.
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I’m noticing that in the past each death created pages of comments on this thread. Now, only a couple of comments. I feel like people are becoming less & less upset and it’s becoming normalized.
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I don’t know what to say anymore. Maybe I’m not the only one?
I remember AllstarB and Ros at Badminton this year. He seemed like such a good boy.
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@Leprechaun, in this particular case, it can be that there is virtually zero technical information available about this tragedy. So, what can be said to improve things for this case? What changes to make so it wouldn’t happen? Einstein famously noted, “God did not roll dice with the Universe. The only things which are random are things we don’t yet understand.” So, how do we all come to understand what actually happened so we can do our parts to improve the odds for our equine partners? Peace.
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Yes.
There needs to be more transparency! Obviously it’s important not to jump to conclusions, or give people wrong information before things have been thoroughly researched, but without keeping some sort of records (or a database) on these injuries and deaths, how will we be able to draw any statistical conclusions?
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Allstar B?! This is all becoming too much. As much as I love watching eventing and and rooting for my favourite partnerships I don’t think I can watch it anymore. Emporium at Kentucky, Nicola, the two horses at Bramham, Tom McEwen and/or Toledo could have easily have died at Badminton…I just can’t anymore.
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I saw Toledo jumping brilliantly and boldly only to be taken out somewhat brutally by that solar panel which, to be fair, that late in the course should have been a 2 stride. Had it been early in the course I could see it as a 1 stride. But asking a bold horse that late in the course to do that was sad. Yes, the others saw that and adjusted, but did it have to take that horse falling in such a brutal manner to prove a point? IMO, the horse was punished for a stellar round.
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Purely based on the livestream it looked like the run out was going to happen regardless (similar to Ingrid’s run out at the same fence, just a little too rangy off the owl hole and horse not getting their eye on it). But there was an audible crack on the livestream where it looked like Allstar B’s LF pastern cracked the edge of the fence and he was immediately non weight bearing afterwards
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I wonder if the lack of comments stem from a few things -
- A lot quieter on the forums than it used to be
- The loss of the horse was due to a physiological event, not a fall. Yes, even when it’s a phsiological event, we can and should work to understand why it might have happened and how it could have been prevented, but I think most people can relate to a horse knocking into something and having an unexpectedly catastrophic outcome.
- The horse’s connections seemed to strike just the right note in their announcements regarding what happened - they seemed to find the perfect balance between being devastated but grateful for having had the opportunities they did with the horse.
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Yes, while I am not at all a fan of the modern eventing courses I think is more of a truly freak accident. Horses often hit fences or stop and slide into them and I have never heard of one breaking a leg doing that by just hitting it a glancing blow on the wooden fence.
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There was also another rather freakish accident of a horse I loved–Crackerjack, Boyd Martin’s horse–who broke his leg going from dirt to sand at a slight drop in Pau, creating a similar flurry (some pretty notorious) of blame/questioning. I mean, it’s worth talking about footing, conditioning, and diet, but a lot of these considerations aren’t specific to eventing. Certainly no signs his connections did anything wrong with what we do know.
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There are no freak accidents. Reed will tell you this, and so will many good vets.
I don’t comment as much on this thread anymore because it is just disheartening. I am tired of watching participants in the sport I love die.
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I know for me, personally, I just have nothing left to say. I have no idea how to go forward and I find it all so upsetting still. I don’t know what the answers are because we still have so little data after all these years. Its a disappointing and heart breaking reminder every time.
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I wondered if he ran out because he felt a weakness or pain in his leg. Chicken/egg thing.
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I read this article today, don’t know whether it is applicable to the topic or not Observing Pain in Elite Event Horses at Badminton and Burghley (horsesport.com)
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