Blumin' eventing claims another horse, poor thing.

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VLHIEASTON

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I think its time for to be down grading this eventing lark, far too much on the horses, sorry thats my honest opinion,, just too dangerous, how can we be horse lovers putting them thru big fences and tricky fences like that...RIP GeeGee and get well soon Zara xx
 
I appreciate your point and respect your opinion, but as a percentage of death of all horses that compete in that sphere, the number is low. Now my own opinion is that I would rather have a horse doing something that it loved and was well treated and had the very best of training, care and nutrition, than horses that are half starved and neglected and eventually euthanised or pass from home to home being in the 'problem' category. The latter group represents a larger number of deaths per year I should imagine.
 
Well said woolly.

And how many are killed directly or indirectly in the race horse industry?

Prehaps we should not be able to ride horses at all, as it may put them at risk!
 
Although eventing has claimed a fair few horses recently i reckon percentage wise it is still a fairly 'safe' sport for horses to do. Deaths in eventing are usually well publicised and we hear about them whereas if a horse dies out hunting we very rarely hear about it.
Friends horse was killed out hacking a year or so ago spooked while trotting along a bridle way and slipped down a ditch breaking its leg, it was a tragic accident the same as Zara had today.
My heart goes out to everyone involved with tsunami the same as my heart goes out to anyone that looses a horse, it makes me hug my horse and realise how precious she is however i am not prepared to wrap her in cotton wool, never turn her out in case she gets kicked, never jump a x country fence incase we fall, never hack on the road incase of dangerous drivers, the list goes on.
 
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Yeah, if you wanna have a go at any horse sport, have a go at racing!! Now that's a hard game for horses to play!!!

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NO let's not.

I work in the racing industry and i get feed up of people just jumping on the sport. I am not going to get dragged into any debate so i am just going to stop here.
 
When its the owner / rider which is making the horse do this they shud take some responsibility, whether horse is willing or not, it is not natural for a horse to jump in the first place.
Not pointing this at any poster in partiular but just in general.
 
May just be my opinion, but it is an entirely natural thing for horses to jump, in fact they do it frequently in thr wild to escape predators?!

I also don't feel that the horses at this level are being forced to do anything, after having watch the coverage of Pau yesterday and seen the way some of those horses helped out their riders, and having worked for a year with one of the 4* riders I know how much care and attention goes into getting them fit and prepared.

When you think of how often combinations have been withdrawn from very prestigious events because their horse was not 100%, and how few times anyone in eventing is caught dopeing (compared to say sj!) The horses are supremely well cared for and would simply not do it if they were forced?!

I can see entirely where you are coming from VLHIEASTON, but unfortunately, I don't agree on this one!

ETS- Just realised this has turned into a bit of a rant and gone slightly off topic....Opps
 
as it happens claire horse can jump A LITTLE naturally in the same way that cats CAN swim but horses are not built for this as their primary function. they are supposed to outrun predators in the first place!! if you look at the relative heights that can be jumped by cats and dogs and deer in comparison you will see what i mean.
apparently it is something to do with the anles of the hips and femurs and their distance from the ribs ie dogs and cats have long 'loins' which is considered a weakness in a horse.
someone who has done more anatomy than me is going to come on here and explain it better. But it is a test of our training methods and the horses willingness to follow them that makes the sport isnt it, not wheterh they ar natural jumpers or not.
 
But I'm too big to ride a cat!!!!!!
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As a biologist/ biochemist I understand this, but it is not an entirely alien concept for them either, you just have to watch a youngster loose schooling to see this. Also with the current breeding programmes to excentuate the natural scope in order to produce 'sport horses' capable of jumping higher and wider, I just feel that saying its is not natural for them, or that they are made to do do it is a bit niave?!

I am of course prepared to be corrected!!
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And my horse takes to gate hopping every now and then, all on his own!

better go out now to the field ( if he is still in it ) and tell him it is not natural.
 
I agree that something must be done. I do not agree that eventing should be stopped completely (Im an eventer myself albeit not at their level).

The course builders are the only ones who can do something. They MUST think back to how XC used to be (when horse / rider deaths etc. were less if not unheard of) - badminton for example used to consist of massive rider-frightener type fences but all very straight forward. Nowadays the courses are ridiculously complicated and technical which I firmly believe is the reason for these deaths. We cant just keep merrily trudging on saying "our sport is dangerous, these things happen" because right now our sport is going down the plughole due to all the negative press surrounding it. Once sponsors start giving up on it then there will be no more top level eventing.
 
As i've said every time someone goes on about how it's all the course builders fault, and how much courses have changed over the years...
Please please please read the Jim Wofford article!!!!!
It's got sweet F-A to do with the XC courses, or the speed at which they are being ridden..
It's got everything to do with the dressage!! The only thing that HAS actually changed over the years!!!
Go back and look at a horse doing dressage 30 odd years ago, it wouldn't even be up to scratch in a PN now a days i expect..

But seeing that some people think that flatwork/schooling is the answer to all problems.. and in order to win/do well at the top 3days you need to be doing seriously smart dressage, this will only get worse!!!
 
MdM, i can see your point, but there is no denying that the xc has changed enormously. i started eventing in 1988, and back then there were no skinnies, there would be perhaps 1 or 2 corners on a Novice course, maybe a bounce, a drop, and then everything else was pretty straightforward. you would get more complicated questions on an Intro course now, honestly. the courses are so much more technical now, but in a very different way. it is all about accuracy and obedience, and i think that makes a huge difference when something goes wrong.
 
But skinnies on a good Adv. horse are not a problem, you can attack them like any other fence!
Since when have you seen the riders 'SJing' skinnies at Badminton/Burghley.. ie the skinny house at the bottom of the leaf pit was usually jumped on a long rein and the better ones off a long stride too..
yes the tight turns etc. need to be brought back for, but they've always had tight turns and awkward lines at the top level..

I agree that an intro now, is like a PN 5 years ago etc. and you are finding much more tech. fences at the lower levels..
But again, something else that no one seems to pick up on, ie Clayton Fred wanting amateur riders to pass a certain grade to have a licence... it's not the lower level people who are killing themselfs, it's the Adv. end riders. which brings me back to my origional point, the Adv. end riders with their uber well schooled horses.
 
Sorry, am I missing something here? I always thought that the better schooled a horse is on the flat, the better jumper it makes?
 
Hmm, I can understand both sides of this debate and nobody likes to see a horse die/be injured or the rider (although I guess you could argue the rider had a choice to take part in the sport).

I think if you actually looked at statistics of horse accidents/deaths you will probably find that more horses die whilst out hacking or just when in their fields at home than they do when out competing.

It is generally just an unfortunate accident, i mean the horse didn't die instantly so i would assume it wasn't evident immediately how sever ean injury it had. I don't know how eventing could be made safer - i am not sure there is a straightforward answer. Were there or did there seem to be less deaths/serious incidents years ago because (a) less people actually competed in the sport or (b) the events weren't reported as much as they are now?

As for racing i think the main prob with deaths in NH is some of the horses just cannot jump! Yes they are fast but are not 'natural' jumpers and that is the trainers responsibility, they should not put them in the race!
 
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Sorry, am I missing something here? I always thought that the better schooled a horse is on the flat, the better jumper it makes?

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Yes, of course at the lower levels any amount of schooling is going to help no end
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.... but at 3*/4* the level of submission is huge!!
A good XC horse should be able to think for itself in a split second.
A good dressage horse should totally submit to its rider..
A contradiction don't you think.

Anyhow, as i said above, read the Jim Wofford article, he explains it alot better than me
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MdM, i totally agree with those points, about submission etc.
bringing in 4-time changes next year will only make it even worse, imho.
i disagree about it being the top-end riders who are having the fatal falls, though. plenty of the terrible falls (including the last 2 in the u.k. iirc) were at the lower levels, at N and Int.
statistically, fwiw, horses and riders at A level fall more frequently than those at lower levels (falls per number of runs etc), because the fences/questions are bigger and there is a far smaller margin of error.
 
I think I am right in saying in this instance zara's horse fell at one of the more let off fences.

In general though and not necessarily with zara I do think horses are overtrained now, we over help them out when we teach them to jump, yes they still do need to be well schooled on the flat, but they should be taught to jump by themselves, because if they lern to rely on you, when you get it wrong you are in trouble.

It is the horses job to jump , not yours.
 
Totally agree about the J. Wofford article,MdM. Some of the most sensible things that have been said and written about event horses / riders' training and how that's affecting today's stats. And every instructor/trainer should read it before training youngsters into believing that a brainless submissive horse with a skilled rider is the only winning combination...
 
21 riders out of a list of 43 to have either been killed or seriously injured were all 3* or 4*... the rest were either 2* or 1* or i wasn't able to find out about them, maybe someone else could?

Edt to add.. So when you think of the 10000s of people competing at intro/pn/n/int. level, i could only find a few that were killed riding at that level.. where as there are [obviously] alot less riders qualified/capable of riding at 3*/4* level, yet half of the list of names killed/seriously injured were riders of that level... as i said above, there were quiet a few names that i was unable to find out what level they rode at...

So i'd say that yes, far more top end riders are having fatal accidents than the amature riders are...

Laine Askher USA Apr 08, 4* rider.
Bianca Craddock AUS Mar 08, 3* rider
Darren Chiacchia USA Mar 08, 4* rider
Ryan Wood AUS/US Jan 08, 4* rider
*Eleanor Brennan GB/USA Nov 07, 4* rider,
Claire Lomas GB Nov 07, 4* rider
*Maia Boutanos FRA Sep 07, 3* rider
*Tina Richter-Vietor GER Aug 07, 3*/4* rider
Ralph Hill USA Mar 07, 3*/4* rider
*Amelie Cohen FRA Mar 07, 3* ?
Debbie Atkinson USA Sep 06, 4* rider
*Sherelle Duke IRE/GB Aug 06, 4* rider
*Caroline Pratt GB Sep 04, 4* rider
Catriona Williams NZ Nov 02, 4* rider
Fiona Chesterton GB Aug 00, 3* rider
*Jemima Johnson GB Apr 00, 4* rider
*Simon Long Sep 99, 4* rider
*Polly Phillips GB Aug 99, 4* rider
*Robert Slade GB Jun 99, 4* rider
*Peta Beckett GB May 99, 4* rider
*David Forster IRE Apr 98, 4* rider.
 
But you have to remember that these higher level riders compete far more frequently than your average PN rider and many of these you have listed werent injured in 3/4*s
 
yes, but my argument isn't about the XC.. it's about the dressage!!
All the names i've mentioned above (3*/4* riders) it would be reasonable to asume that they were better than your average rider on the flat/dressage..
 
There is obviously no one answer. Yes, we are building courses differently and asking different dressage questions, but there are also many other changes in the sport - types of horses competing, background of riders/horses, number of runs, medical advances, changes in the authority structure etc.- that might be less clear cut and not as generalised (and therefore easily addressable) but no less important to the conversation.

And Boss does have two good points. It might very well be partly a numbers game, with upper level riders taking more risks - for all sorts of reasons - more often. These are also the people more likely to take chances to win and to ride aggressively as a general rule, no matter what level they're at. Also, the fact that people are not generally having fatal crashes at PN may be partly due to the very obvious fact the fences are smaller and the speeds are slower, allowing for a much greater margin for error, not necessarily fewer or less serious mistakes.

On the point of the people on that list not riding at 3/4* when disaster struck, in the only case I have any first hand info about it was definitely nowhere close to that level and I can say with fair certainty it was not because the horse was over schooled or even in the habit of extreme obedience. (In fact there is evidence to the contrary . . .)

Also, looking at that list, it really doesn't seem a list of dressage stars and it would be interesting to know how many of the horses involved actually excelled at that phase in general. This is not to say the "too much dressage" argument doesn't have merit, but it might raise the oh so common complication that doing something technically demanding not very well is far more dangerous than not doing it at all BUT then does that mean the question shouldn't be asked of anyone? This starts to become a social issue as it's no longer fashionable to tell anyone that doing something incorrectly caries risks - now we are supposed to say making the attempt is the important thing.

i do agree with Woffard's article - it makes some very valid points. Of course he is also an enthusiastic proponent of highly technical, progressive, extensive and varied jump training for horses, particularly if they are aimed at the top levels. He very emphatically is NOT suggesting horses should just be allowed to do whatever they do any old way they want to and that part of staying safe involved education for both horses and riders. If people are going to use his opinions as "proof" of something then presumably they also support his well proven methods and school accordingly.
 
Having just read Lars Sederholm's book I would like to quote his thoughts (written in 1999):

'It is common for people to think more dressage means better jumping, and I have always thought more dressage, worse jumping. This is beacause the action of the horse in 'jumping flatwork' is so different from that in 'dressage dressage'. To people who got excited about this belief, I gave the example of going to a place like Aachen where you used to have the best dressage riders and the best show jumping riders in the world warming up next door to each other. Compare them when working on the flat, and one picture was very different from another.....

....I would like to believe that the flatwork for horses could be the same for eventers, show jumpers or dressage horses until you got to the high levels, but it unfortunately does not always work this way. When pure dressage is put into the horses too early they become restricted out of a jumping point of view, losing the roundness of action that the right flatwork for jumping produces.'

This was written eefore the introduction of the new 4* test (2005) with the flying-changes and years before anyone ever considered incorporating 4-time changes into an eventing test. I think the fact that this man has trained some of the most instinctive and natural XC riders ever (Yogi Breisner, Robert Lemeiux, David O'Connor, Lucinda Green, Mary King et al) gives his words some weight.

To which I would like to add that I have had some very sticky moments on green horses at PN level that we've got away with, but would almost certainly have produced a fall if the fence had been higher/wider/on a slope etc.
 
the other thing to consider (and i have read the wofford article, i believe i posted a link when it was published) is that now drressage is carrying more weight people think they need a flashier moving warmblood which i do not believe (and i am not alone in this) think as fast as blood horses. perhaps it is no coincidence that the rash of accidents equates to the demise of long format and the belief that a different type of horse is required now there is no high speed chase.
and training for this phase is now a thing of the past but i know Yogi is a great believer in getting his prodigies to school for racehorse trainers. Chris King still does have a few in to school on behalf of yogi's racing clients and what ever his other faults are, there is nothing wrong with the way he rides over a fence or trains his own to deal with them.
 
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