Frangible Pins

[Orangehorse]

Walking the course at Cornbury there was one fence that I particularly noticed had frangible pins, or a collapsing system. There were probably others but I wasn't noticing those. This was a downhill timber spread. It was well built as it had a ground line of flowers, which would encourage the horses to take off and it was on a slight bend.

When I was eventing I recall that there was a girl killed at such a fence as this, although it was on a steeper slope and didn't have a good ground line, . also it was just in a straight line, so it was a case of galloping at it. It wasn't on my course but I noticed it walking round and was glad that we weren't jumping it. What happened was that it was a youngish rider on a big powerful horse that simply got away from her and hit the fence. Its possible to picture this, horse with its head down pulling like crazy didn't jump high enough. There was never an event held there again.

These collapsible fences are such a good idea if it can prevent this type of accident. We know we can't avoid all falls, but anything that can prevent an ugly damaging fall has got to be good. I am so glad that course design has improved and safety features are now part of eventing.

In the end I wasn't aware of any horse touching the fence today. It was only a slight slope and all the riders I saw approached it carefully and the flowers at the base certainly helped.

 

[Squeak]

Agreed, they've made a huge difference to the safety of the sport. There are a couple of times they've gone and riders have been given penalties when it's not seemed entirely deserved but these seem far outweighed by the amount of accidents they've prevented.

When you watch current 5*s compared to the old ones you can really appreciate how much they do.

 

[Birker2020]

They used to say that if a horseshit a fence above the knee it was likely they'd just stable over it, abmvove the knee then it was much more likely to be a slow rotational fall.