It's a pointless bit of back protection and PR in a bid to keep social license
I put this up on another thread. It was taken in the warm up of a national level BD competition in the last 12 months, where two horses were being ridden the same way for a lengthy period of time.
I always end up looking at the hooves at competitions, there're some "interesting" ones, like the hind one on the previous post, I wish the photo quality was better.