Eventing People.......

[lucretia]

anyone who has an interest in eventing particularly the future of the sport ought to watch this broadcast in american this week on ESPN one of their biggest cable networks. Be warned some of the images are very unpleasant but this is the perception the general public are getting of the sport and why it was so important there was no serious incident in Hong Kong.
http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?categoryId=3060647

 

[Skhosu]

just started, but why when Darren C fell did all three fence judges go for the horse???? Horrendous looking :S

 

[lucretia]

lord knows but i suspect it was because they were afraid of what they would find when they went to the rider.

 

[Acolyte]

Hmmmm, very thought provoking stuff

 

[lucretia]

and the comment on the other side of the pond has been equally thought provoking particularly about young riders being bought horses.

 

[Skhosu]

yes, but who are E;60? never heard of them before now and it seems a bit biased to me..
not to say anything that promotes safety is wrong..

 

[Acolyte]

It did strike me as sensationalist journalism in the way it was presented, but I also feel there were some valid points made by contributors

Totally agree about the Darren C fall BTW - I was actually shouting at my laptop 'never mind catching the bloody horse, get on the radio and get the medics!'

 

[Acolyte]

Thinking about it, I actually caught up with the August edition of Eventing today, and read the Clayton Fredericks article about licensing event riders. I am inclined to agree with what he is saying.

 

[lucretia]

E-60 are a sports news programme on ESPN which i have explained above is a huge cable network it is equivalent to sky sport here. this is the reality that people outside eventing are seeing now, not only in the USA anyway when you have looked at that read this http://equisearch.com/horses_riding_training/english/eventing/wofford_eventing_lives_051408/ the man is a legend and talks plenty of sense.

 

[lucretia]

havent seen that yet TBH but i have discussed this subject in depth with cklayton so i can imagine what he said.

 

[Acolyte]

"You can't drive a car without lessons and a licence, so why should you be let loose at a horse trials without these two fundamental things" (pg 16, Eventing magazine, August 2008)

That was concerning licences for amateur riders - as one myself I totally agree with him.

ETS: sorry about the saddo referencing, you can tell I have just finished a college course, I cite my references automatically

 

[DBrasnett]

What a awesome article. I agree with Wofford totally.

 

[Acolyte]

Yeah have read the article a couple of times before, it is very very good

 

[lucretia]

not nearly as sad as me reading this stuff on a saturday night..... x

 

[hadfos]

[ QUOTE ]
E-60 are a sports news programme on ESPN which i have explained above is a huge cable network it is equivalent to sky sport here. this is the reality that people outside eventing are seeing now, not only in the USA anyway when you have looked at that read this http://equisearch.com/horses_riding_training/english/eventing/wofford_eventing_lives_051408/ the man is a legend and talks plenty of sense.

[/ QUOTE ]
my

what total sense,have to agree with the jump racing paragraph...I do hope that eventing is not given the bad publicity that alot of other things have been given and gets the animal do gooders(that actually no jack shite) turning our horsesports into a farce!!....think they need to look at...as you said,jump judges running after horse???sod horse if it running away it fine...rider on deck..spells priority!!

 

[lucretia]

i just think its lucky there wasnt a really bad fall in hong kong this programme was aired just prior to that contest. as for jim wofford pity he isnt on the FEI committees.....

 

[SpottedCat]

I can just see it now....they can set the team at Bristol Uni who are researching safety to instead researching how exactly you can make papier mache fences that do not crumble to nothing when they get wet! We lose so many events to rain in this country, I love the idea that it is somehow feasible to have fences made from something which falls into piles of soggy paper when it gets wet!! And following the same line of logic, to not have fences in water too I suppose.

 

[hadfos]

[ QUOTE ]
i just think its lucky there wasnt a really bad fall in hong kong this programme was aired just prior to that contest. as for jim wofford pity he isnt on the FEI committees.....

[/ QUOTE ]
it went smoothly thank god

...hopefully quash the crap that is floating around...i do think however it is inevitable though before somebody kicks off about the sports we do with our horses

,(you know the showjumping we do were we kick and beat our horses to an inch of their lives to get over a fence

)and we all have to defend what we do....mad crazy world we live in

 

[k1963]

[ QUOTE ]
Thinking about it, I actually caught up with the August edition of Eventing today, and read the Clayton Fredericks article about licensing event riders. I am inclined to agree with what he is saying.

[/ QUOTE ]


Read that too & agree that Clayton F made a lot of sense . Unable to watch the clip fully for some reason - will try again later .

 

[TarrSteps]

Absolutely anyone near should have gone for Darren not the horse but I suspect the fact that it's a young stallion, not known for his superior politeness, might have influenced them subconsciously. Everyone is so conditioned that a loose stallion spells disaster - rightly or wrongly - that they are primed to make that a priority. More a case of people not thinking, I suspect. Although still no defence!

 

[Equus Leather]

I totally agree with Clayton. After watching the Intro classes at Richmond today the standard of most (not all) of the riding was appalling and dangerous, and that was in the show jumping! Some people should not have been allowed to go XC but I doubt the judges will have the bottle to stop people.

Allowing people with no riding skills to take part is asking for trouble.

 

[dozzie]

Thanks Lucretia. Both are interesting but especially the second one. Gave me food for thought as I have been taught in the past to let my horse find his own way without rider interference and he learnt to sort himself out over anything. Yet now I find my current horse relies on me. I actually wouldnt want to take her eventing. Having read that article I definitely need to rethink what I am doing re the jumping.

It made a lot of sense. I am sure there are more underlying issues that have contributed to the increase in falls but the issue of horses relying on their rider is one I have experienced personally.

 

[VRIN]

what artice ?

 

[VRIN]

Re article - just read the thread back didn't realise I was at the end of it!

 

[dozzie]

It also made me think about how hunting used to be a training ground for young horses and was seen as a part of their early education, yet now people dont hunt them for fear of injury.

 

[SpottedCat]

[ QUOTE ]
I totally agree with Clayton. After watching the Intro classes at Richmond today the standard of most (not all) of the riding was appalling and dangerous, and that was in the show jumping! Some people should not have been allowed to go XC but I doubt the judges will have the bottle to stop people.

Allowing people with no riding skills to take part is asking for trouble.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd be amazed if the team didn't stop people who were truly dangerous - people have been pulled at every event I've been to this year, at every level from intro to novice, one person didn't even make it into the SJ. So it is unfair to say they wouldn't have the bottle - in my experience BE do have this aspect sorted and do pull people who are really unsafe.

 

[LoneRanger]

I completely disagree with licensing. It'll just push the cost of eventing up even further and price people out of the sport. Also, the impression I get is that the people getting killed are experienced professionals and not amateurs. It all comes back to looking at statistics again, if stats indicate that inexperienced riders suffer significantly more serious injuries than experienced riders, then the issue needs to be tackled. I still don't agree with licensing however. There's already a rule that you can't go xc if you get too many penalties sj and stewards can (and do) stop people who are riding dangerously on the xc. At some point we have to accept that eventing is a dangerous sport. It's good to make the sport as safe as reasonably achievable but accidents will always happen.

 

[kerilli]

interesting, thanks for posting that. although the comment that the xc "used to be 18 miles long" and has been reduced to about 4 miles did make me smile...
i think the fence judge was right to go to Darren's horse, it had stopped within about 10 feet of him and might well have trodden on him if left loose. the fence judge was on her radio as she caught it (had it in her other hand) no doubt calling for paramedics. the fact is that unless you are a trained paramedic, you don't move an unconscious person who has just had a fall/been squashed like that... not if you know for certain that the paramedics and ambulance will be there within a minute or two, guaranteed. you won't be able to do anything they won't do, and the chances of you doing it slightly wrong are too terrible to contemplate.
papier mache fences, interesting idea. it would only be the horizontals that would need to be explode-able, so it's a possibility i suppose. must admit, i'd be happier riding to a fence if i knew that if i totally cocked it up, there was no chance of me breaking my horse's or my neck...
or perhaps we need projections of fences, with lasers to measure whether the horse has "hit" them or not!

 

[MaxP]

I am coming back into eventing after a number of years out of the sport. I am now living in Sweden and to start eventing again here I needed to first get a 'Green card' which is a licence that you need to compete at all (basically just testing you know the rules and have decent riding ability). Then to event you have to do another test and get another licence which is much more focussed on eventing and tests rules and ability to ride at speed etc. Finally to start in a 90cm class my horse and I have to go out and jump around 2 SJ comps of 90cm and 1m with less than 8 faults in total. This continues up the grades with you needing to jump around a track at least 10cm higher than what you would find in the eventing class in order to qualify. It is a lot of work and time but at least when you (finally!) get onto a cross country course you are fairly well prepared and know what your doing.

 

[kerilli]

MaxP, i think a similar system should be introduced here. Qualifying competitions could be held all over the place, most eventers want the practise anyway!
I saw a rider going round a 1* CIC recently, she was sitting on the horse's back between fences, thumping up and down (she wasn't skinny either) she had no idea how to float above the horse at canter/gallop to let it run underneath her, it was a horrible display of riding. she was hooky to the fences, and then kicking like mad afterwards to try to make up time. awful, poor horse.
this was at the end of the round, no-one had tried to stop her even though she was riding very badly.