Hey man, you do you. If you’re ok risking your horse dying alone at the bottom of a valley he just fell down the cliff of because “the vetting requirements are significantly higher,” be my guest.
I like my horse too much to take that risk.
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This could happen on a basic trail ride too.
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Do you complete basic trail rides of 100 miles in the dead of night?
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Back to back 50’s is often harder on the horse than a straight 100
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Wow this thread has blossomed into many offshoots. My simple minded thought is that it’s not equal (doesn’t mean it’s not important or concerning) to compare the actual activity …. The course … the questions asked of the horse in Eventing with whatever back stable shenanigans go on in the hunters. Both things can be true. People can do awful things to get an edge in EVERY sport and the sport itself can be dangerous AF.
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Well with all those vet checks, the horses will get spun. At least the horse is not at the bottom of a valley waiting for sunrise to get help.
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A year ago I was on a 6 mile trail ride when my horse slipped on an unseen rock in a stream, fell, and took off. He was missing for 24 hours but found totally fine and still tacked up. It was the first time I’d ever had an issue trail riding and it was a clear sunny day.
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I would like this thread to get back on track. Please. People and horses have died for this sport. Their names are on the hundreds of pages of this thread. They were living, breathing, sentient individuals with goals and ambitions. Some of them were my friends. It hurts my heart to see their memories insulted by the infighting here and the blanket statement[s] thrown about about how bad other disciplines are.
There are other threads for COTH-level diatribes. This thread is just too serious and the cost some of these people and horses paid too high to sully their memories by quibble and whaddaboudisms.
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I give up, clearly in your eyes anyone out there who is riding above basic level and outside of a manicured ring is just out there to murder their horse.
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This.
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There is a wide, huge, gigantic swath of riding between “manicured ring riding” and “traversing 100 miles of dangerous trails with no hope of rescue”. If you can’t see that, or can’t admit that it’s done for human glory, I also give up.
And with that, back to eventing.
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Eventing is also done for human glory.
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Good point.
I think the only reason to bring up other sports here is to maybe discuss the things that sport has done to increase safety and how that step might help here.
There is no reason to be tossing out real or fake statistics about other sports to move forward with finding ways to help Eventing.
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Yes, it is. And I’ve stated that many, many, many times here. The horses do it because we ask - no other reason why.
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People, horses, cats, dogs… have occurrences/ accidents every day that result in fatalities. I feel very strongly that we need to learn and do better from these things. Going back to specifically equine- If there is a certain type of cross country jump or a certain spot on an endurance trail or a certain way of roping or a certain race track etc that we see multiple similar injuries/ fatalities with, we need to figure out how to fix it. Even just one fatality should in fact be absolutely investigated to see where we can learn and improve. Sometimes it’s just going to turn out to be a fluke. But nothing we do in life will ever be 100% safe, whether we are talking the high levels of sport or turning our horse out in a field.
I was an outrider at the Fair Hill International for 20 years before it became the 5*. I have seen horse injuries and death front and center and I don’t believer for a second those riders/ trainers/ grooms/ owners associated with the those horses were thinking - darn there goes my glory.
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Thirty years ago when I was piddling around at Novice and Training, I would look at the upper level fences on courses and just be horrified because I didn’t think they were fair questions, and I couldn’t imagine how to ask my horses to navigate them.
I do think there has been a lot of scrutiny of eventing deaths and injuries, and it HAS resulted in a safer sport for horses and riders. I hope that good work continues.
I watched the Kentucky 4 and 5 star this year and was REALLY impressed with the course design and the quality of the riding. Eventing IS making strides forward.
I have followed this thread for years, and have been grateful to @Jealoushe for compiling the data.
However, before my foray into eventing, I spent decades in the lower to mid level hunters. I never saw a horse death at a show, and never heard of one, either. (With the exception of the accidental shooting of Rain Forest at Lake Placid way back in the day.) I knew of someone who accidently killed their horse trying to give an IV injection and hitting the vein, and horses that were put down because of chronic unsoundness, but horses dying AT the show? From falls or other reasons? Not to my knowledge or experience.
I thinks there’s a hard distinction between asking @Jealoushe to share the data and personal attacks. I don’t know @Jealoushe personally, so I can’t really make a personal attack. If she can’t share the data, for whatever reason, okay; but sharing her rather shocking conclusion without being able to share the data is irresponsible. I don’t think we’ve even heard if “more deaths” means more deaths as a raw number or as a percentage.
Asking someone to back up their own controversial and shocking statement is not the same as a personal attack.
I can simultaneously be grateful to Jealoushe for maintaining this thread, hope she continues to update it and her research AND ask that she support her statement about H/J deaths. Those things are not mutually exclusive.
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I thought by ‘more deaths at h/j shows’ it was implied ‘deaths outside of the arena and at competitions.’
I have zero access to any private data, but, echoing others, given that many people go to h/j shows vastly more frequently than horse trials (even at a lower level h/j show barn I rode at, there were some people who went to a show EVERY weekend, locally), I can see how that might be possible IN THEORY.
But if more horses are getting hurt at h//j due to medical events, overtraining, accidents by showing “away from home,” again, that would be an apples-to-oranges comparison just because in the US, there are so many more h/j shows, and people show more frequently within that discipline (I believe). And those are different types of injuries, with different causalities.
Obviously, within eventing, there have also been instances where horses have had medical events (cardiac, leg injury) when not jumping, either just warming up or between fences.
It’s hard enough even comparing eventing to eventing injuries at different venues, at different levels, without throwing other disciplines under the bus.
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This was not at a H/J show - it was a saddlebred show at VHC.
Yes - there are horse deaths at H/J shows and human deaths as well. Sh** happens but the majority of the time horse falls in the competition arena do not result in death to either participant.
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@Impractical_Horsewoman agreed that it would be fantastic if there were more transparency in statistics (and that they were more readily available).
For instance, one of my horses had to be euthanized at a distance event. It had zero to do with the actual ride. We had completed and loaded on the trailer to go home, he somehow reared in the trailer and punched his LF hoof through the window slat, flipped out and severed the tendons to the bone. It was horrible. But we are considered a fatality at the event because we were still on the grounds- I don’t think things like that counted in statistics are helpful to anyone esp when it just is covered under “other”.
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I don’t think anyone can realistically argue that eventing places more extreme demands on the horses’ body (via training or actual competition). I am not sure how it can be disputed that eventing deaths are higher than other equine sports, statistically speaking.
So many factors would have to be taken into consideration, and I am sure a stats person could better explain.Maybe “more horses die” at hunter shows (doubt it but bear with me), however. the number of hunter shows, horses entered etc would skew this and make it not “apples to apples”.
If you take the number of high performing eventers vs high performing jumpers or hunters (whatever level may equate- I do not know how to normalize for this) - the eventing number would be higher of horses that died as a direct result of competition- either by traumatic injuiries or physical exertion.
Actual release of numbers may surprise some of us, but considering the shear amount of h/j shows vs events and the horses that compete- it is not a equal comparison.
Attempting to say “but hunter die, too” does nothing for the topic at hand- how to make it safer for horses and people who want to event.
The general audience on this forum wants to protect the sport of eventing, allow it to grow and evolve and keep it as an Olympic sport (a sport that tries to manage athletes participating in a “risk sport”).
Continual efforts to communicate findings of falls, injuries, root-cause analysis, safety advancement will hopefully lead to less injuries/deaths and allow for the sport to continue.
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