WTF Are We Doing?

[JP60]

[QUOTE=Rachael5517;8888217]
I did not see the round prior to the death of the horse, but I was able to watch some of the previous rounds and there were no actual falls or refusals there were just a couple sketchy looking jumps in there (not riders fault at all we all have bad jumps and we don’t know how the horse was behaving that day). You can go look them up on rideonvideo.com. I did not see the round that day nor the fall because I was too far away. I also do not blame the rider at all because I know everyone makes mistakes and she must already be so horrified. I apologize to everyone here and the rider that it came off that way. As I am still an amateur I have no right to come to conclusions like that. I feel horrible and send my love and apologies to their family and hope they can recover from their loss.

I also do not think all of those suggestions above will completely solve the issue but they could get us couple steps closer. I was unaware it was possible to force a move down so thank you for correcting me. The more you know.[/QUOTE]
When I read your initial post I did not see where you were attacking the rider though commenting on watching past videos to make a judgement about their current ride was maybe not the best judgement. You seemed to be more reflecting the same desires we all have, WTF can we do to save horses. It is scary to think that there were two serious/deadly horse falls at the same show. Perhaps it would be interesting to not only know the type of fence, but who was the designer.

There are folks in this sport that will decry such questioning and concerns about riders, because they see this from the rugged individual perspective. Go at your own (oh, yeah, and the horse’s) risk, though the horse doesn’t have much say I guess. SInce you can’t stop all deaths then do nothing for they will happen anyway.

Can’t say as I subscribe to that view for Eventing is not some extreme, rules be damned activity like base jumping or riding mountain bikes down insane cliffs. It is an established sport, with governorship, rules, and venues meant to provide good competition, not a game of survival. It takes but a moment to make a decision to pull a type of fence while a study is done on it’s value in the sport. It takes maybe just a little more to consider adjustments to how the endurance phase is run which might reduce the potential, for that is what we are talking about here, for serious injury or death. I’d bet that not a single ULR, and let’s face it, this whole thread is about them, would stop Eventing if courses were extended, OT adjusted for more technical questions (extended), technical questions reduced, adjustment in penalties for over under OT were introduced to help remove the dressage factor. Remove so many accuracy tests in xc and add them to stadium where the potential for serious injury and death is much lower. How would that harm the sport?

See, our leadership in the sport either won’t or can’t make such decisions as they are still guided by that old rugged, run at your own risk approach, blinded by the fact the Course Designers have silently taken over the safety of our horses and some have put that below spectators and sponsors.

Your comments question those rules, as well they should for though we can say ‘bad things happen to good riders’ we still seem to base safety on the skillsets of great riders, and they are few. If a Michael Jung is bored going around a 4*, if he is winning all the time the solution is not to make the course harder, thus more unsafe for most riders, but just wait till Jung get’s bored enough to move on or starts a new horse.

[SnicklefritzG]

Not to hijack the thread, but what gives Michael Jung the ability to make difficult courses look so easy? The way he handled the vicarage Vee made it look like a cakewalk.

[QUOTE=JP60;8888392]
When I read your initial post I did not see where you
Your comments question those rules, as well they should for though we can say ‘bad things happen to good riders’ we still seem to base safety on the skillsets of great riders, and they are few. If a Michael Jung is bored going around a 4*, if he is winning all the time the solution is not to make the course harder, thus more unsafe for most riders, but just wait till Jung get’s bored enough to move on or starts a new horse.[/QUOTE]

[JER]

What if eventing adopted the simple, no-exceptions rule that if there is a horse or rider fatality anywhere on the showgrounds, the competition is cancelled immediately and all results are nullified?

[gardenie]

Anywhere? Any reason? Not sure why you would go to this extreme. I could have a heart attack and die in my chair on the showgrounds and the show damn well better go on.

[JER]

[QUOTE=gardenie;8888496]
Anywhere? Any reason? Not sure why you would go to this extreme. I could have a heart attack and die in my chair on the showgrounds and the show damn well better go on.[/QUOTE]

Why?

[Highflyer]

What good does cancelling it and nullifying the results do if a horse flips out in the trailer or something? I kind of can see it for a fall (in that it might make people less passive and maybe cause actual change) but I think extending it automatically to any death is over the top.

[JER]

What is extreme, and what is actually happening, is that horses and riders are getting killed on XC.

It’s still happening, after all these years of hand-wringing, finger-pointing, committee-making, study-undertaking, etc. With five rider deaths so far this year, it’s hard to make the case that the sport has become safer.

Abandoning a competition and nullifying the results would mean that a death impacts everyone. So yeah, you can still send out your condolences to connections and be gutted and heartbroken and 50 shades of sad, but we’d also have to deal with the very real, immediate effects of a competition being cancelled. At the FEI levels, this would cause some real problems for people – but logistics and goal problems, not deaths.

It would then be in everyone’s interest for horses and riders not to get killed at horse trials.

Sometimes safety doesn’t come about through conventional means. Eventing has been making lots of noise about safety since the horror year of 1999. Now we’re 17 years down the road and we all know terms like ‘rotational fall’ but the sport still has a body count.

As for people dying while sitting in their chair – well, if you’re a rider, and you’ve had an incident on course, that might be very relevant. And it’s not like there’s a history of riders dying while sitting in their chairs at horse trials. Shorter version: It’s not going to happen.

A horse flipping out in the trailer and dying as a result? Again, an unlikely occurrence, but if we care about horse welfare, and if horse welfare is really the paramount principle of equestrian sport, than why shouldn’t this death be taken seriously? Why shouldn’t all resources be turned toward that situation? Why is the competition more important than the death of a horse, especially if we really do care about horse welfare?

[Jealoushe]

[QUOTE=SnicklefritzG;8888408]
Not to hijack the thread, but what gives Michael Jung the ability to make difficult courses look so easy? The way he handled the vicarage Vee made it look like a cakewalk.[/QUOTE]

The solution that does require a safety issue is to add more endurance back to the game.

It is that simple.

Why are they fighting this SO hard? Because they cant have pros riding 10 horses a day…so what.

[JP60]

[QUOTE=Jealoushe;8888676]
The solution that does require a safety issue is to add more endurance back to the game.

It is that simple.

Why are they fighting this SO hard? Because they cant have pros riding 10 horses a day…so what.[/QUOTE]
I like this answer, but I feel it is also that he works to create a real bond with the horse he rides. That it is that partnership required for success at that level. When Halprin and Springer got dumped from the 2012 Olympics and decided to ride Burghley we saw amazing rides. Why? Because in the time between getting dumped and heading down center aisle at Burghley, they got to mostly concentrate on one horse, maybe with some side stuff, but one horse. It showed.

Yes, we need endurance back, really at the top level, because if it did reduce the number of rides able to be run in a day, it might push riders back to getting to really know their horses and they in return. Once that happens the corrections needed become unconscious, more automatic, less thought. Trust is not demanded, it is earned.

Jung’s good, in my view, not because he is a super rider, but that he takes time to build trust and that does come, in part, from endurance, not short rides.

[Littleluck55]

[QUOTE=JER;8888442]
What if eventing adopted the simple, no-exceptions rule that if there is a horse or rider fatality anywhere on the showgrounds, the competition is cancelled immediately and all results are nullified?[/QUOTE]

For example, the horse who died at Spring Bay this year, died from a heart attack between fences at the training level. I don’t think the event should have been cancelled.

[Blugal]

Current Equestrian Canada proposed rule changes contain proposed changes to decrease the maximum length of XC at the Advanced, Intermediate, and Prelim levels. This is accompanied by an increase in the minimum number of jumping efforts at the Advanced level. I think this is a very poor change and I have made a comment to EC about it.

Anyone else who would like to comment on this must do so before October 28th, 2016:

To submit comments on these rule change proposals please send an email to rules@equestrian.ca:

Quote the Section and Article number in the subject line
Provide your EC sport license number in the body of your message following your comment

[beowulf]

[QUOTE=Blugal;8888853]
Current Equestrian Canada proposed rule changes contain proposed changes to decrease the maximum length of XC at the Advanced, Intermediate, and Prelim levels. This is accompanied by an increase in the minimum number of jumping efforts at the Advanced level. I think this is a very poor change and I have made a comment to EC about it.

Anyone else who would like to comment on this must do so before October 28th, 2016:[/QUOTE]

This ^ I cannot believe people of capable, rational thought would believe decreasing the length while increasing the efforts is possibly a good idea.

[JenJ]

[QUOTE=beowulf;8888858]
This ^ I cannot believe people of capable, rational thought would believe decreasing the length while increasing the efforts is possibly a good idea.[/QUOTE]

you are making the assumption that the people running EC are possessed of capable, rational thought
their recent actions suggest otherwise.

[JER]

[QUOTE=Littleluck55;8888846]
For example, the horse who died at Spring Bay this year, died from a heart attack between fences at the training level. I don’t think the event should have been cancelled.[/QUOTE]

Why not?

[Sticky_Situation]

Better yet, why don’t we ban eventing altogether? That would ensure no horse or human gets even so much as a scrape at a horse trials.

Seriously, we do need to make our sport safer. But nullifying an entire event because a horse hurt itself in the trailer and had to be euthanized is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

[tbchick84]

I have not read the entire thread, so excuse me if this already was discussed. I was wondering, of the horses that have died on XC, how many of the horses are owned by someone other than the rider, ie pros on a clients horse versus horses who are a owned and ridden solely by one person? Where I’m going with this is, is it a matter of not knowing the horse well enough due to having other obligations on other horses?

[JER]

[QUOTE=Sticky Situation;8889029]

Seriously, we do need to make our sport safer. But nullifying an entire event because a horse hurt itself in the trailer and had to be euthanized is throwing the baby out with the bath water.[/QUOTE]

How so?

[Sticky_Situation]

[QUOTE=JER;8889059]
How so?[/QUOTE]

Because it diverts the focus away from and does nothing to mitigate the actual problem: that major accidents and the associated injuries and fatalities are happening too often on cross country.

[Littleluck55]

[QUOTE=JER;8888976]
Why not?[/QUOTE]

How does cancelling an event because a horse had a heart attack between fences make the sport safer?

[MNEventer]

[QUOTE=JER;8888620]
Abandoning a competition and nullifying the results would mean that a death impacts everyone. So yeah, you can still send out your condolences to connections and be gutted and heartbroken and 50 shades of sad, but we’d also have to deal with the very real, immediate effects of a competition being cancelled. At the FEI levels, this would cause some real problems for people – but logistics and goal problems, not deaths.

It would then be in everyone’s interest for horses and riders not to get killed at horse trials.[/QUOTE]

At the very least, it would motivate people to channel their thoughts and prayers into real action. That would be a start.