https://www.facebook.com/7newssydney/videos/1208485422508922/
[QUOTE=sunrider;8562099]
âŠ
I came to have a look at Chronofhorse to see if the news had made it here and this was the first time Iâve come across this thread. It is so shocking to see that huge list at the beginning. I think what shocks me even more is that that the 90s are held up as the time when the deaths started and things were changed to try to reduce deaths yet this list makes it patently obvious that nothing theyâre doing has worked. I feel almost like people are tacitly agreeing not to talk about it.[/QUOTE]
in total agreement with all i quoted.
thankyou for beginning and, sadly, maintaining this pathetic thread.
I was there the day Anna Savage died.
[QUOTE=Jealoushe;8562159]
https://www.facebook.com/7newssydney/videos/1208485422508922/[/QUOTE]
(I hate facebook comments.
someone makes a tactless remark, and right before our eyes the multitudes are out for blood on basically a bereavement thread.
unbelievable.)
and i apologise for mentioning that here.
also, I hope the OP realised why I used the word âpatheticâ upthread. I was not implying your starting the thread was âpatheticâ.
[QUOTE=Thylacine;8562229]
(I hate facebook comments.
someone makes a tactless remark, and right before our eyes the multitudes are out for blood on basically a bereavement thread.
unbelievable.)
and i apologise for mentioning that here.
also, I hope the OP realised why I used the word âpatheticâ upthread. I was not implying your starting the thread was âpatheticâ.[/QUOTE]
No worries, I agree with what was said above.
I debated bumping the thread because itâs painful for us to all remember and think about the lossâs and what happens in our sport, but I stand by my belief that we canât just ignore it.
I always dread seeing this thread bumped⊠but thank you, Jealoushe, for starting and maintaining it⊠it certainly is sobering.
Bumping thisâŠ
Horrible day, my condolences to all involved.
[QUOTE=Lori T;8663186]
Horrible day, my condolences to all involved.[/QUOTE]
Yep.
I find it interesting and a little sad that the overwhelming consensus on the Eventing Nation post about Philippaâs death is that itâs an acceptable risk of doing the sport, because hey, throwing a leg over a horse any day is dangerous, right? and she loved what she was doing, so if she died doing it, itâs okay.
I mean, I wouldnât mind kicking it one day when Iâm old and worn out, while riding, but to be 19, or 31, with a husband and a child at home, itâs hard to wrap my head around the acceptability of that. From all accounts she was having a good ride up until this table, then boom, gone. The horse fell on her and she was done. Boyd Martin is very lucky that wasnât him at the Vicarage Vee at Badminton. I guess, if you truly do love it and donât mind dying for the sport, well, go have a good ride then. I am conflicted about the horses like Ouija who have no say in the matter. But thatâs true of all kinds of horse sports. Truly depends on what your idea is of acceptable risk. No one is making these crazy brave individuals go out and put their lives on the line with every ride. Godspeed to the fallen.
2007 is a particularly horrible year. On the ThoroughbredChampions website they have a list each year of the horses that die while racing or in training to race. I canât even look at it anymore, there are hundreds of horses listed every year. Eventing is catching up. 
[QUOTE=FatCatFarm;8663334]
I find it interesting and a little sad that the overwhelming consensus on the Eventing Nation post about Philippaâs death is that itâs an acceptable risk of doing the sport, because hey, throwing a leg over a horse any day is dangerous, right? and she loved what she was doing, so if she died doing it, itâs okay.
I mean, I wouldnât mind kicking it one day when Iâm old and worn out, while riding, but to be 19, or 31, with a husband and a child at home, itâs hard to wrap my head around the acceptability of that. From all accounts she was having a good ride up until this table, then boom, gone. The horse fell on her and she was done. Boyd Martin is very lucky that wasnât him at the Vicarage Vee at Badminton. I guess, if you truly do love it and donât mind dying for the sport, well, go have a good ride then. I am conflicted about the horses like Ouija who have no say in the matter. But thatâs true of all kinds of horse sports. Truly depends on what your idea is of acceptable risk. No one is making these crazy brave individuals go out and put their lives on the line with every ride. Godspeed to the fallen.[/QUOTE]
This is not crazy brave to me. It is just desperately tragic.
My DH gave me a hard time tonight about eventing. He saw the news on Facebook. I didnât really have a good answer. We have two little kids.
You know the phrase âNever Trumpâ? Well, now you can count me as a member of âNever Eventing.â I have always loved the idea of eventing-- testing horse and rider in different disciplines with varied terrain and obstacles. But with all the recent horse and rider deaths, I will never steer my daughter in that direction. While sheâs under my care and I am paying for her horse sports, sheâll have to stick with hunter/jumper or dressage.
What is the solution? Simpler courses? More events at a lower level before the horse can move up? Is there a solution or is it just part of the sport?
Something needs to change so that these tragedies are not a ânormalâ course of events at competitions. It is not acceptable that so many horses and riders die in this sport. I love horses, I love riding and I love to compete but for all that is holy⊠this is just too much. There must be a way to make the penalty for a horse or rider mistake less costly.
I agree. Horses and riders make mistakes. They shouldnât have to pay with their lives.
I think that is something everyone agrees on, but no one can come up with a solution. Weâve come up with frangible pins, collapsible jumps, whatâs next? Where do we go after that? Turn XC jumps into stadium jumps out in a field? It sounds like that is the only other option⊠Itâs unfortunate, but saying something needs to change is one thing. Figuring out what needs to change is another.
I admit that I think FEI Eventing Chairman and Badminton Course designer della Chiesa has been terrible for eventing as we know it. I had a perception that the FEI and the FEI Eventing Committee were much less focused on safety than they were in 2008, when there was the great upheaval and all moves toward frangible pins, deformable fences and more qualifications. Although there were proposals for safer fences, the only one that actually seems to have been put into place are frangible jumps. It seems to me that all research stopped and people went back to the way jumps were built and located. There have been almost no advances since 2008-2009.
I wanted to know if della Chiesa was on the Committee during 2007 and 2008, during the intense focus on safety because of all the deaths, so I looked it up on the Wayback Machine. Wayne Roycroft was the Committee Chairman until 2009.
Some of della Chiesaâs quotes seem to me to indicate that safety is not his highest priority. As I interpret his position from what has been published and his quotes, he believes that eventing is inherently risky, that riders must be responsible for their own safety, and that itâs their own fault if they die.
The first section of the 2010 Kentucky masterâs thesis on jump engineering lays out the history pretty well. Further, it evaluated two safety fence designsâa hinged gate and a collapsible table, and neither one of those designs has made it onto courses. Itâs almost as if all engineering advances had been put on hold. We donât see the Pro-log on courses, no collapsible table design has been approved, and the hinged gate idea was completely new to me.
Instead we see more water jumps, more jumping in water, and the studies that show these to increase hazard have been completely ignored. The recent FEI fence safety study seems to have been ignored as wellâat least insofar as this yearâs courses have been built.
If safety is not the first consideration in Course Design and designers donât use all possible safety innovations, we are going to slide back into the mindset that existed in 2007, and people will continue to dieâIâd say needlessly.
Thank you vineyridge! so it sounds like the root of the problem lies with the new chairman. I, along with many others I assume, did not realize (or bother to check) that no advancements in safety have been made since the big uproar of 2007-08. It looks like the only way to get a change made and more research done, is getting a chairman in that cares about safety. And that involves us speaking up and never letting the topic die.
But even âstadium jumpsâ in a field wouldnât take away all risk. Just recently a show jumper was euthanized in the ring (if I remember right) after breaking a leg at a water jump. And I thought there was another jumper who died after a fall not long ago. So even getting rid of the xc-style jumps and putting stadium jumps in their place wouldnât take away all risk. (Edited to add that I know these ring accidents involved horse deaths and not rider deaths.)
I wouldnât say it does lie with della Chiesa; but it may. My point is that we have simply stopped doing science in eventing after the flap died down. The old guys that were interviewed in the Kentucky masterâs thesis had many thoughts on why eventing seems less safe now than it was in the past, and many of them focused on changes in the sport which affect both horse and rider (and training). To my way of thinking the even more recent changes under della Chiesaâs leadership have magnified the effects that the old guys saw in 2009.
