Are You Qualified or READY for the Next Eventing Level?
Eventing is a dangerous sport. We have been reminded of this in the past year, as we have lost a lot of friends, both two- and four-legged. The hard truth is that as long as 100-pound humans meet up with 1,000-pound horses, humans (and sometimes horses) are going to get hurt.
Both the U.S. Equestrian Federation (USEF) and Fédération Equestre Internationale (FEI) are actively engaged in making our sport as safe as possible. Even as we welcome their efforts, however, we should view with a little suspicion any effort to do something for people that they can do better by themselves.
Several reasons have been suggested for recent eventing fatalities including loss of balance at speed, fence design...and just plain bad luck. The one factor I think has the greatest effect on safety, however, is the competence of the horse and rider. (This also goes back to the “bad luck” factor: Although the capricious nature of luck is one of the hardest things to deal with as you go through your life, it is also a widely quoted aphorism in sport that the harder athletes work, the luckier they get.)
We can improve fence design, and we can draw up increasingly complicated qualification schemes to control when a rider is allowed to move up to the next level of eventing. However, we cannot help riders who confuse being qualified to compete at a given level with being ready to compete there.
article continues below|
|
Not a Simple Fix
Eventing is a terribly complicated sport, and it is hard to examine one facet of the sport without considering all the others as well. For example, about 10 years ago a horrible number of rider fatalities suddenly occurred. In response to these fatalities, course designers were instructed to build cross-country courses that contained more complex combinations and accuracy questions. The thinking was that this new design would serve to slow the competitors down, which would make the sport safer. It was a good idea, but it did not work.
What happened next is that riders figured out how to jump the accuracy questions at slow rates of speed and then to gallop at a terrific pace to make up for the time lost in the slower sections of the course. While it has become common for riders to “make the time” at most events (when was the last time you watched Rolex and nobody made the cross-country time?), they are now going at speeds that once were reserved for the steeplechase phase of the Classic format, where riders jump at high rates of speed over soft brush fences. Because of the change to the short format, we are now seeing a generation of riders and horses who have never done a steeplechase phase. This means that when riders move to the next level of competition, for which they are “qualified,” many of them are going at a higher rate of speed for the first time.
Obviously, the riders are inexperienced at this new speed, and they are going to arrive at an obstacle out of rhythm, or “miss.” Just as obviously, the penalties for missing at a solid obstacle are much more dangerous than coming too close to a soft brush fence with a sloping outline. You might notice that I have not said much about horses as being part of the problem, because it is not the horses who are the problem, it is the riders. Horses don’t like to fall down and if riders can learn to stay out of their horses’ way, both horse and rider will usually have a safe and enjoyable time of it. Certainly you need the right horse for the job, and I can give you some help in finding a suitable horse for eventing. Reread my May 2006 column in Practical Horseman on selecting the right horse for eventing. Just remember that once you have taught your horse how to do something, your job is to tell him what to do, and then stay out of his way.
The ramifications of building more complex cross-country courses are that we now have courses that are basically a series of complicated show-jumping questions, which demand a slow, balanced approach. These combinations are usually followed by several plain obstacles designed to be jumped at speed. This sort of design causes more and more extreme changes in the length of stride of the horses, with more and more chances for riders to lose their rhythm and balance. The reason for this is that the slower you make riders go to negotiate the combinations, the faster they have to go elsewhere on course, to achieve the required optimum time.
  |
