On speed, one thing that might be true is that the less experience you have the more speed errors would tend to faster. This is purely from my own limited experience when it seems that I’m flying at a huge rate of speed when I’m merely galloping at the back of the hunting field.’
Thank you to lecoeurtriste for sharing more details of the study done on jump shape and speed and distance.
Lecouertriste, great work! THIS should be in every course designer’s mind, IMHO, and the USEA should sponsor more study on the subject if they don’t think it’s enough.
I’m pretty sure Reed and Gnep could do wonderful work with it as well.
PS: I hope your screen name isn’t a reflection of your true emotion.
[QUOTE=frugalannie;8175588]
Lecouertriste, great work! THIS should be in every course designer’s mind, IMHO, and the USEA should sponsor more study on the subject if they don’t think it’s enough.
I’m pretty sure Reed and Gnep could do wonderful work with it as well.
PS: I hope your screen name isn’t a reflection of your true emotion.[/QUOTE]
All we need is a set of laser eyes and camcorder per jump studied, a few cones on the ground for reference points, and maybe a “marker” on the saddlepad by the wither. Since riders are already competing and you wouldn’t be changing anything about the course (just observing their performance), it shouldn’t be difficult to pass through IRB and I bet most riders would sign informed consent forms to be taped at one or two fences on the course (we don’t sign waivers for anyone else to take pictures, afterall). The most time-consuming/labor aspect would be analyzing the data (but I’d be game and have the software).
And FWIW, my screen name comes from a loooooong time ago when I was a mere babe doing a semester abroad in the Sud Tirol with Ezra Pound’s daughter…she made us write poetry weekly for “Sunday Tea”. One week, our assignment was to take a published poem or song and translate it into a different language, while making it both accurate and not losing the feel and rhythm. Being an exercise science major surrounded by uber creative English majors, I chose to translate the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Since this was almost a decade before the internet, once I had to select a username/email address, I figured no one else on this side of the pond would use it (and I’ve been right for 25yrs!). 
If anyone would be interested, I’ve received copies of the 2003 and 2006 British studies mentioned above from a kind COTHer. The 2006 one is especially interesting to me, and might be interesting to y’all as well.
Jumping biomechanics are fascinating. There are multiple ways to clear 1 meter.
Walk close to the base and explosively hurl yourself over. Or race towards it, take off long and fold your legs out of the way. Either extreme is inefficient and not sustainable over a whole course.
There is an old motorsports axiom
“cheap, fast, reliable. Choose two”.
The jumping axiom might be:
Fast approach
Deep takeoff spot
Shallow trajectory
you may only choose two per jump
Course designers are in some control of the take off spot…
Viney, on an evening when I’m not flattened, I’d love to read the info you’ve offered. What’s the best way to access it?
CSU92, thanks for distilling the issue to it’s irreducible minimum. Strong work!
Lecouertriste, thank you for the backstory.
Viney, I also would love to see the info. Thank you.
Viney I of course, would love to see the studies. Thank you
PM me your email addresses and I’ll send the studies on.
So this is launching soon…maybe some of their gatherings will be used for safety purposes?
Completely along a different vein, but is there any sort of award or recognition for course designers, nominated by riders? Like a “People’s Choice” award for horse-friendliest course design?
It seems like we should do more to reward and recognize the course designers out there who DO make an effort to incorporate new information into their course design, rather than just being upset about the ones who don’t.
“It would never happen, because many top riders, and some on this forum feel their ego is compromised if the sport is not extreme.”
Ok so do you have any proof that many top UL riders are all about extreme sports here? it seems to me the majority of top UL riders are professionals–they are not yahoo cowboys–they are methodical and I suspect dont sleep that well the night before a tough course. it is not base jumping or skiing backcountry type of sport.
It seems to me wanting a challenge–because you think you are the best prepared/talented to meet that challenge–and you want to be rewarded for that preparation and skill and talent -does not mean one wants to court death and serious injury for horse and rider. (It is not inherently required or integral to the sport----unlike base jumping.)
[QUOTE=omare;8178217]
“It would never happen, because many top riders, and some on this forum feel their ego is compromised if the sport is not extreme.”
Ok so do you have any proof that many top UL riders are all about extreme sports here? it seems to me the majority of top UL riders are professionals–they are not yahoo cowboys–they are methodical and I suspect dont sleep that well the night before a tough course. it is not base jumping or skiing backcountry type of sport.
It seems to me wanting a challenge–because you think you are the best prepared/talented to meet that challenge–and you want to be rewarded for that preparation and skill and talent -does not mean one wants court death and serious injury for horse and rider. (It is not inherently required or integral to the sport----unlike base jumping.)[/QUOTE]
Thank you omare. The quote you note at the outset is very much the sort of comment that I find so very offensive. I would guess that whoever wrote it has very little personal contact with those she insults.
Assaults on character of persons you do not know… grrrr…
Another death, with plans already in place to get necropsy data to the Cardio-Pulmonary Task Force:
http://eventingnation.com/home/wise-espartaco-collapses-dies-after-cross-country-at-roebkes-run/
Unfortunately rules cannot be made to completely eliminate poor
Decisions. In area iii this winter I witnessed far too many decisions to compete that were very obviously to me, and a lot of people the wrong one. Very dangerous decisions with ulterior motives. It angered me because no matter what we do to make jumps safer, to do cardiovascular research, no matter how much money is spent, preventable accidents will occur as long as people continue to act this way.
So let’s just say she was physically fit for the competitions, because who knows if she was or not but her. But leading up to it all who was riding those horses? Did they have time off? I don’t care if a capable rider rode them in the last part of her pregnancy, the horses got familiar with someone else, change riders and head to Kentucky? I was more concerned with how she could have possibly prepared for the events in the months ahead, rather than her physical ability on that day.
[QUOTE=omare;8161726]
Would folks be saying the same thing if it was a guy who became a father --are you saying it is the physical issue of pregnancy and birth or being a new parent (which obviously crosses genders) which might adversely impact an UL competitor ?
Just curious…(and how does having a baby differ from coming back from a broken …fill in the blank …)[/QUOTE]
So let’s just say she was physically fit for the competitions, because who knows if she was or not but her. But leading up to it all who was riding those horses? Did they have time off? I don’t care if a capable rider rode them in the last part of her pregnancy, the horses got familiar with someone else, change riders and head to Kentucky? I was more concerned with how she could have possibly prepared for the events in the months ahead, rather than her physical ability on that day.
[QUOTE=HorsesinHaiti;8181862]
Another death, with plans already in place to get necropsy data to the Cardio-Pulmonary Task Force:
It’s odd, but i was talking to a friend who is up on medical matters after Scubed died, and she told me that there was a known genetic human heart defect where the first symptom of the problem is usually death. Started me wondering if horses might have something similar.
[QUOTE=vineyridge;8181944]
It’s odd, but i was talking to a friend who is up on medical matters after Scubed died, and she told me that there was a known genetic human heart defect where the first symptom of the problem is usually death. Started me wondering if horses might have something similar.[/QUOTE]
That is true, but if you read Scubed’s blog over the past few years, you would see that she had a known condition.
[QUOTE=vineyridge;8181944]
It’s odd, but i was talking to a friend who is up on medical matters after Scubed died, and she told me that there was a known genetic human heart defect where the first symptom of the problem is usually death. Started me wondering if horses might have something similar.[/QUOTE]
I never even thought about that, but I think you’re right. I had a patient with that (long QT syndrome, specifically, but your friend may have been talking about Brugada).
Gentleman had no history of any health issues whatsoever, was playing basketball on a hot day, and basically dropped dead. We were able to revive him (Thank God!), he got a pacer implanted, and made a full recovery. The assumption is that he must have gotten hit/jolted at just the right moment that it disrupted his heart rhythm.
It isn’t a stretch to imagine the same sort of thing happening with an event horse running at speed with no prior cardiac problems;
LQT is usually asymptomatic because, in lieu of anything acting on the heart during the lengthened QT interval, everything usually works just fine. The QT interval (time between depolarization and repolarization) is a vulnerable time during a heart beat, and so the longer it is, the more opportunity something has to disrupt the beat and cause a dysrhythmia, like a funky step, bumping a fence, et al.
The example I use is the difference between a line drive (normal heart beat) and a pop fly ball (LQT); the latter is a heckuva lot easier to catch.
(Any cardiac-wise COTHers, please feel free to correct me if I explained it wrong. )
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