JER,
I agree with you.
However, I believe the reason people cannot wrap their heads around the changes that will actually prevent injury to both horses and people is that the sport is inherently dangerous and to make it safe would mean redefining x country.
And x-country is the aspect of the sport that makes it different from just dressage or just stadium jumping.
So how to keep UL X-Country competitive without being dangerous?
And to keep the sport relevant to viewers/riders/Olympics. It is hard to imagine what that type of course would look like and how we can switch over anytime soon from the infrastructure we have now.
It wouldnât be too hard to start with helmets and protective vests, though. As I said earlier, if US Eventing canât even get around to passing a rule requiring certified protective vests, how important to them is safety? If the FEI doesnât mandate helmets in dressage, how important to them is safety?
[QUOTE=vineyridge;8674417]
It wouldnât be too hard to start with helmets and protective vests, though. As I said earlier, if US Eventing canât even get around to passing a rule requiring certified protective vests, how important to them is safety? If the FEI doesnât mandate helmets in dressage, how important to them is safety?[/QUOTE]
They will.
It was not that long ago that you could wear any such hat on xc, as long as it âlookedâ like a riding helmet.
It was not that long ago that no one wore safety vests at all on xc.
It was not that long ago that one could have a bad fall, possibly suffer a concussion, and catch their horse and continue on xc.
It was not that long ago that riders could gallop 650 mpm around a BN course and not receive speed faults.
It was not that long ago that âŠ
This, IMO, deserves its own thread.
[QUOTE=vineyridge;8674417]
It wouldnât be too hard to start with helmets and protective vests, though. As I said earlier, if US Eventing canât even get around to passing a rule requiring certified protective vests, how important to them is safety? If the FEI doesnât mandate helmets in dressage, how important to them is safety?[/QUOTE]
Yes, thatâs amazing. MJ wore a tophat at Rolex. Attitudes need changing but as someone pointed out, itâs a damn dangerous sport and deaths will always occur. Our little necks snap too easily. I think this challenge is far more daunting than say Formula 1 racing. Weâre on top of a sentient, living animal, not inside a well engineered machine. Seems like the variables on experience, training, conditions, soundness, etc, etc. for two living things in a dynamic relationship are much more numerous.
[QUOTE=riderboy;8674583]
Yes, thatâs amazing. MJ wore a tophat at Rolex. Attitudes need changing but as someone pointed out, itâs a damn dangerous sport and deaths will always occur. Our little necks snap too easily. I think this challenge is far more daunting than say Formula 1 racing. Weâre on top of a sentient, living animal, not inside a well engineered machine. Seems like the variables on experience, training, conditions, soundness, etc, etc. for two living things in a dynamic relationship are much more numerous.[/QUOTE]
YES, YES, YES.
But it was not that long ago that Allison Springer set a HUGE example by showing in a helmet at Rolex Dressage. It created quite a (positive) stir and was the stepping stone to many more switching over. It seems as though Americans by and large wear helmets more so than Europeans. But I also think that we tend to be more cognizant of safety concerns generally (note how Europeans still ride often without helmets in videos online).
Our challenge is more daunting than Formula 1 or Fencing, and we also have less $$ available than Formula 1. Our sport is generally not known (witness: none of my non-horse friends know about a recent death eventing).
So we have more of a challenge but that does not mean we wonât meet that challenge.
[QUOTE=Winding Down;8674593]
YES, YES, YES.
But it was not that long ago that Allison Springer set a HUGE example by showing in a helmet at Rolex Dressage. It created quite a (positive) stir and was the stepping stone to many more switching over. It seems as though Americans by and large wear helmets more so than Europeans. But I also think that we tend to be more cognizant of safety concerns generally (note how Europeans still ride often without helmets in videos online).
Our challenge is more daunting than Formula 1 or Fencing, and we also have less $$ available than Formula 1. Our sport is generally not known (witness: none of my non-horse friends know about a recent death eventing).
So we have more of a challenge but that does not mean we wonât meet that challenge.[/QUOTE]
Exactly.
[QUOTE=Littleluck55;8674357]
Formula One can reduce deaths, not prevent them. They had a Formula One death last year from a race.[/QUOTE]
Oh yes, letâs talk about that one death in twenty years. The Bianchi accident had unique circumstances in that Bianchiâs car hit the back of a crane that was removing a car from another accident (this was the Japanese Grand Prix, there was a typhoon going on). The FIA responded immediately with new regulations for safety cranes, weather conditions, etc and more research/changes in cockpit safety.
The FIA did not say âItâs one death in 20 years, conditions were poor, the crane made a mistake.â The FIA did not say âF1 cars and motorsport is inherently dangerous, blahblahblah.â
Iâm sure you can see the difference in that. Whether you want to admit it to yourself is another matter.
[QUOTE=stoicfish;8674399]
However, I believe the reason people cannot wrap their heads around the changes that will actually prevent injury to both horses and people is that the sport is inherently dangerous and to make it safe would mean redefining x country. [/QUOTE]
You might have been talking about motorsport in the 1960s and 1970s. This is exactly what people said to Sir Jackie Stewart when he was advocating for safety measures in F1. It was so bad that there were even âJackie Stewart jokesâ poking fun at his penchant for â gasp! â safety. But the sport took safety seriously, and not only survived but thrived.
And an F1 car is going 200+mph on a track with 15 other vehicles going 200+mph. Eventing will never come anywhere near those speeds, and, as I pointed out earlier, surviving an accident at those speeds is no small challenge given the basic kinetic energy equation.
Why are we accepting this inertia? Yes, I know âeveryoneâ is doing âall sorts of stuffâ. But riders and horses are still dying out there, and the sport orgs canât even agree on body protector certification (or any evidence of protection) or require helmets in all phases.
Riding is comparable, in many ways, to another high-risk sport I follow pretty closely: scuba diving. People also die at a fairly high rate scuba diving, and you are also dealing with a large unknown that can act in ways you donât expect: the ocean.
And people most often die for all the usual reasons they have rotational falls: they screw up. The vast majority of SCUBA deaths are preventable. I personally know one person who died and two who got bent SCUBA diving within the last couple of years. They all made mistakes. The ones that got bent made pretty minor mistakes but it was enough and they are the first to tell you so. Itâs actually pretty easy to get the bends, who knew. Just donât drink enough water and you can get them diving within your computerâs parameters.
The person who died? her death was very likely completely preventable if sheâd had basic safety equipment and if sheâd listened to it.
Itâs an interesting parallel to me because you can look at these things and say, âwell, itâs a risky sport, thatâs how it goesâŠâ or you can say âitâs a risky sport. but these kinds of deaths are preventable. hereâs what we need to do to avoid this kind of accident in the future.â
In the Dive Training magazine we get, they have a column where every month they go through an accident and deconstruct what went wrong. Itâs usually the only thing I read. Itâs by far the most useful information in the thing. You canât always prevent things from going wrong when you are dealing with a Big Unknown like a horse or the sea, but you can learn what to do, and what equipment you ought to have around when they do.
At the same time, I am far from holding up scuba diving as âdoing it right.â They have far too many deaths and injuries. Around 80 deaths per year. They of course have far more participants than eventing. The death rate is 3-6 per 100,000 according to a report I found.
But they do attempt to push education, for the most part, and most divers take safety very seriously. Iâve never heard one have a close brush and just shake it off like riders tend to do. Itâs a much different mentality and one weâd do well to change from the ground up. Thereâs such a âkick onâ mentality you see riders doing the same crazy unsafe stuff over and over. You see a diver do something unsafe, most dive boat captains will ream them a new one and if they do something like that again, just wonât carry them on the boat any more. No one wants some fool to die on their boat.
The boat my mom goes on most of the time, the captain checks your computer himself during the interval and if you went over into deco time and you shouldnât have, youâd better have a strong spine because youâre going to really hear about it. Good for him.
A lot of the âget to zeroâ initiatives are great but itâs hard when youâve got something like a horse to deal with â we can aim for zero rider deaths, for sure, but falls are going to happen and horse cardiac events are going to happen too. likewise in diving, one of the big killers is human cardiac events. âget healthy before you diveâ is one of their big initiatives. hard to say âdonât have a heart attack down there, please!â Itâs a goal but zero, wellâŠ
after Jordan McDonaldsâs death BE made certified vests a requirement. They have also made changes to their helmet rules in the past year requiring that helmets not have brims. And when a question was raised about the brim on a particular helmet, BE acted to change its rule. BE can act quickly and does. BE has gotten funding for most of eventing research in the world for years. BE can find money. AFAIK BE is the most safety proactive national organization in the world of eventing.
[QUOTE=fordtraktor;8674647]
The death rate is 3-6 per 100,000 according to a report I found. [/QUOTE]
Interesting post. Is that the death rate for all diving incidents? Or is it the death rate for diving incidents in which all safety precautions/equipment were used?
This may be due to the inescapable fact that humans are mammals. When we are submerged in water, especially cold water, there is an increase in heart arrhythmias as well as the bradycardia effect of mammalian diving reflex. The arrhythmias are associated with the breath-holding phase in swimming, but perhaps that affects diving as well.
Then thereâs the phenomenon of autonomic conflict, in which the body becomes confused in an immersion situation (happens on land as well, as with true heat stroke) and goes into arrhythmia or arrests. And finally, cardiac irritability is a dangerous factor in hypothermia, which is always possible in water.
A person with a perfectly healthy cardiovascular system can fall victim to any of these things at any time in water, just because they are human.
Thatâs the rate for divers who are members of Divers Alert Network. Itâs a very large group and most recreational divers are encouraged to join when you get your basic certification. Any many do, though it probably skews toward the more serious. So itâs a pretty good though not perfect subset of people who dive recreationally. It does not account for what kind of equipment was used or how experienced you are or anything. It likely excludes the âone-off on vacationâ type divers. The equivalent of a âtook a trail ride onceâ horse fans. I am sure they have accidents too but it wouldnât be included in these figures, not likely to be DAN members.
In my mind, there are two areas we need to focus our attention in order to make eventing safer.
- Better safety equipment
- Prevent rotational falls
With regards to #2, while riding well and being well prepared for the level are important, they are not IMO guaranteed to prevent rotational falls when you are dealing with split second decisions and 1200 lb animals with minds of their own. We need to find a way to keep it from being lethal when horses and riders make mistakes, so I think the focus should be on designing courses that are challenging but donât cause mistakes to result in rotational falls. Eliminating vertical faced tables and false ground lines, building fences that break away in the event of a hard hit ⊠These are all things that could be done NOW.
Some may say that more horse-friendly fences and collapsible fences will make things worse by encouraging unprepared riders to compete, but I personally donât think that is the case. I donât see hordes of beginners galloping around Grand Prix at the jumper shows just because the fences fall down. It would be a way to keep XC influential, and keep the level of technicality if they so desire, while making it less dangerous.
Some interesting parallels. Overall I support the âget to zeroâ initiatives and mindset while realizing that even with a fully integrated safety culture, there will probably still be rare events that end in tragedy.
However, is scuba diving really a sport in the same sense that eventing is? As far as I am aware, there are no organized competitions and no rules or governing bodies. Iâm not saying that your examples arenât valid, but that scuba diving is more like mountain climbing where the individual risks being taken are usually for the most part in the name of recreation/adventure/personal fulfillment rather than âsportâ.
There are certainly things you can do underwater with a tank that are judged, even if they arenât in the Olympics. Some of them are pretty hair raising and make Eventing look like T ball. Read a book called âHell Diverâs Rodeoâ if you want some good laughs about it. That particular competition doesnât seem to have âsafetyâ on the mind.
But itâs a fair question, G&T. It does matter. How much? I donât know. I still think it offers a lot of useful parallels and takeaways, and perhaps we ought to just think about it some. Maybe we ought to not confine our thought so much to a narrow concept of âsportâ if we can find interesting lessons from a wider view. I mean, why not cast a larger net? It wonât be a perfect fit but I thought it might help a little because the organized sports donât have the âunknownâ factor like horses. The ocean, to me, really is a lot like a horseâŠit is no machine and you have to respect it.
1 Like
[QUOTE=JER;8674365]
Hereâs an example of another sport taking safety seriously â and this was after ONE high-profile competition death.
The sport is fencing, the year is 1982, the city is Rome. The current Olympic and world champion in foil (a light flexible weapon), a Ukraine-born Soviet athlete called Vladimir Smirnov is in an early-round bout against a German fencer. Smirnov is a huge star in a small sport. Heâs so good that not only did he win individual gold in foil at the 1980 Olympics, he also won team bronze in epee, which is a totally different weapon with different rules, target area, etc. This is the fencing equivalent of winning individual gold in dressage, then taking bronze in the show jumping team event.
The German fencer and Smirnov make simultaneous attacks and the Germanâs blade breaks on Smirnovâs chest. A broken fencing blade is useless for fencing (you can only score by pressing the electric point into your opponent) but it makes a pretty damn fearsome jagged knife.
Then the blade bounces off Smirnovâs chest and goes through his metal wire-mesh mask, through his eye, and into his brain. It was obviously all over for Smirnov, but due to idiosyncrasies of Italian law (which also factored into how Ayrton Sennaâs death at Imola was handled), Smirnov is kept on life support for 10 days so the tournament can continue.
Fencingâs governing body â the FIE â could have said âFreak accident. Really. In the past 100 years, there have been 7 fencing deaths, so really, the odds are so small, how can it possibly be a problem?â
But thatâs not what fencing said. They said âNo more deaths in competition.â In came new materials and testing procedures for uniforms, underarm protectors, plastic chest protectors, masks and gloves. The old steel blades were replaced by maraging steel, which is stronger and breaks in a safer manner. This was a total overhaul of all of the equipment and wearables, and at every competition now, you go through equipment control or you donât fence.
This was the response to ONE SINGLE DEATH.
And that was the last death in a fencing competition.[/QUOTE]
I thank you for continuing to point out, with great examples, how other sports handle competition deaths. The attitude that I hear from so many eventers on the âinherently dangerous natureâ of eventing is just defeating. Come on people, there is always, always room for improvement in safety.
[QUOTE=LAZ;8674185]
Perhaps you can start your own, independent task force on this matter; it seems you have a very clear vision for where it should go and how to resolve problems.[/QUOTE]
I truly do not understand the snark. Vineridge was making a point, I was making a counter and mine was solely pointing out a bad comparison. Anyone with enough money can climb Everest with but enough training to follow a guide and physic to get to the top. It takes years to master the art of riding enough to enter the start box at Rolex. Deaths occur on Everest more so due to weather and lack of experience, not the potential for unsafe, man made objects.
I asked the question, after this last death has any NO taken any active step to make a change in this sport. LGL says take out tables. THis is a seasoned professional and removing one fence would hardly hurt this sport and it would show that there is a proactive approach to safety. Instead of snarking me with the âown taskforceâ comment at least provide a counter to mine. I felt the author of the blog was heartfelt, I connected with the essence, but I feel more could be done now.
[QUOTE=JP60;8674939]
I truly do not understand the snark. Vineridge was making a point, I was making a counter and mine was solely pointing out a bad comparison. Anyone with enough money can climb Everest with but enough training to follow a guide and physic to get to the top. It takes years to master the art of riding enough to enter the start box at Rolex. Deaths occur on Everest more so due to weather and lack of experience, not the potential for unsafe, man made objects.
I asked the question, after this last death has any NO taken any active step to make a change in this sport. LGL says take out tables. THis is a seasoned professional and removing one fence would hardly hurt this sport and it would show that there is a proactive approach to safety. Instead of snarking me with the âown taskforceâ comment at least provide a counter to mine. I felt the author of the blog was heartfelt, I connected with the essence, but I feel more could be done now.[/QUOTE]
Not a snarkâitâs a comment, based on all your suggestions. Youâre somebody, too, and somebody needs to do something, right? Weâre all somebodies, and we all need to put our money and efforts where our mouths are.
Lesley calls for getting rid of tables until such a time as they can be made frangible (or, more realistically, events can afford to replace them with frangible devices and train the staff to install them and repair them safely as they deploy).
This does not happen within 3 days of Lesleyâs blog post. If you want it to happen within that time frame, offer to go out to your local event, build something to take the place of that particular jump or sponsor a jump to replace it that a jump builder can make.
I have a great deal of confidence in some of the folks that are on the safety committee (including Lesley, who is a friend) but I also get the logistics of all of this, which is why I get behind the frangible jump fund raising by donating half my schooling fees from my schooling day. But I canât do that until I earn them, and I canât do that until people show up and pay for schooling, and I canât do that until I get back the bookkeeping done to deposit and then send the funds. So I get it that change is not Right This Minute, even if I wish it could be.
If half the people that bitch actually got behind and supported things (not just this thing, but lots of things) more would get done. Thatâs the way of the world, sadly.
[QUOTE=fordtraktor;8674647]
Riding is comparable, in many ways, to another high-risk sport I follow pretty closely: scuba diving. People also die at a fairly high rate scuba diving, and you are also dealing with a large unknown that can act in ways you donât expect: the ocean.
âŠ[/QUOTE]
I have been certified for over 20 years and I disagree with the comparison. Eventing is a highly regulated event, diving is a recreational activity that anyone that is certified can do. There is no âeventâ guidelines when you go out only best practices, and the operator taking you is going to determine the safety or you as an individual if you go alone. It is not nearly as structured as an event. If some half drunk guy wants to go over the wall in the Caymanâs and not pay attention, then he will be a stat. And that stat includes everyone that is not so well trained. So much different than the huge amount of time and effort that goes into being an UL eventer. In other words one is a hobby that you do at your own risk and your lack of training will probably be the hazard the other is a very competitive sport.
When amazing riders and horses at the top of the sport are dying due to the nature of the course, you have a hard time saying it is a lack of training or ability. You can say the sport has some seriously unforgiving aspects to it.
I think things can change but someone has to give people a vision on what that change will look like so there is a goal.
How luxurious we all are with comments, advice to one another, and epistles of grand notions.
Iâm with LAZ. Get giving. Iâm with Denny. Get volunteering.
I still want an answer. Why has not USEA proposed a final, emergency rule to the USEF for certified vests along with helmets in dressage? Why has USEF not proposed a rule to the FEI for the same thing? If safety is really so important to either body?
That is certainly not a Luxurious, Grand change. BE does such things in a very short time.
