EVENTING FATAL ACCIDENTS : AVIS DES PROS DU CCE

WHAT CAN WE DO TO PREVENT ANY MORE FATAL ACCIDENTS?

Bruce Davidson:

Bruce Davidson has probably ridden more championship courses over more years than anyone in the sport. Twice a world champion, Bruce takes an historical view of the present problem:

"I think ever since its beginnings, the sport has been extremely conscious of safety, and being as protective of horse and rider as possible. Courses are much more horse friendly and built in a better way than they ever have been before. Horses are better educated, and better trained than they have been in the past. But it is a sport that requires speed and taking some chances. We've gone many many years without any incidents and it seems we have these incidents coming one behind the other. There will be a committee that looks into it, and comes up with the best answer possible as far as keeping the sport as far as possible. We used never to wear body protectors, our crash hats are much better than they used to be, all of that is improving... but when you play any game at the top of the line..."

Do you think the new scoring system is putting too much pressure on riders to go fast across country?

"I'm not really qualified to answer that. For the first time in many years I haven't ridden so many international events. I think the scoring system still needs to be worked out."

What about the suggestion that the top rails need to be cut into sections that would fall apart on impact?

"I think that would make it more dangerous myself. I don't like that idea. I think that the solid, in its own way, makes it safer. There have been just as many incidents where the horse has stopped and chested a fence, and the rider has fallen on the back side. If the log fell down, it would be just as fatal as the horse."

"I think each incident is being investigated, and I'm sure that if there is an answer to make it safer, that course will be taken."

Jim Wright:
Jim Wright, New Zealand chairman of selectors, a master of foxhounds, and someone who is deeply shocked and troubled by the recent deaths. Do you see anything we can do?

"I don't know. I can't see a common denominator in any of the accidents as they have been reported to me. I think the situation should be studied, but I don't know if the sport has any more time, that's what worries me. The sport is running out of time, and has to been seen to be looking after itself. I'm not saying the sport is not looking after itself, but that might be how the sport is perceived by the public."

You ended up on the committee of investigation at Burghley...

"It's a tragic scene to be involved in. You don't go from New Zealand to England, and expect to finish up on one of those committees. It was a compliment to myself, and a compliment to our country, to be asked to be on the committee. Especially when the other members were Wayne Roycroft and David O'Connor, because we hadn't been involved in such a committee before."

"It was bad enough the accident that I was at, but to have another one the following week, I just don't know what to do about it. It is a problem everywhere when someone gets on a horse. The accident I was involved in, with Simon Long, was exactly the same as one that occurred on our own hunting field. I'm master of hounds, two days before Atlanta, the horse cart-wheeled over the jump, the lady is still alive, her horse landed on her waist down, Simon Long's was waist up, but it was an identical slow motion spill. You couldn't blame time - it was one of those things that happens when you jump horses. I've done exactly the same thing as those riders, kicked a horse in at the last minute with the cane on him to make him jump. It's a real problem but I don't know what we can do."

Wayne Roycroft:
Wayne Roycroft is a former international competitor, current Australian coach, and a member of the FEI eventing committee, and a deep and insightful thinker about the sport.

What is the international eventing community going to do about the current string of fatal accidents?

"There has already been a committee set up by the British Horse Trials, with the FEI, and people like Jackie Stewart are going to be on that committee - really knowledgeable people from other sports are going to be involved, to turn the whole thing over, shake it, and see what drops out, it there a way we can radically change the sport to make it safer. Do we have to leave the sport as it is - can we do that and keep it acceptably safe. I do not accept the attitude 'oh well it's a dangerous sport', sure it is dangerous, but it is not acceptable when someone gets killed. Basically all the people who have come onto this new committee are saying 'no, we don't have to accept it, we don't accept injuries to horses, and riders, albeit that the sport has dangers - life has dangers. We need to look at what we can do to keep the sport exciting - and not so dangerous."

"I think the British system of running all their one day events at impossible times and at 600 metres a minute, is wrong. You don't make the time at British events, and that as a culture is wrong. To win an event over there you have to take more risks than the rider who comes second to you, because you have to go absolutely flat out cross country. Perhaps it is significant that most of the accidents have occurred in England. That's only one aspect, and in their defence, in England they have a huge number of riders competing on a three day a week basis. They have changed their times immediately - it is now back to 570 a minute."

"There are obviously individual fences to be looked at. In Simon Long's case, Mike Tucker and I decided immediately that you should never have an easy out on a right angle to a face you were jumping fast. You should take away the opportunity for someone to slide sideways and take the easy option. That is something we can do right now."

"We have to look at the idea of rails that disintegrate. If you take away the barrier that flips a horse over then it has got to be safer. Some people feel that if you make the fences completely safe, then you don't encourage safe riding, you encourage more dangerous riding. Apart from being a very physical thing, there is also a very psychological thing, the respect that a rider pays to a given fence. Sometimes the so-called toughest fence on the course rides the best because all the riders give it 100%, whereas something deemed a little softer, riders may take a risk at, if take a risk is the right word - but we've all done it, always, there are times we have taken those risks. Sure, knockdown, softer, takeaway rails on the top of a fence should be looked at, but one of the things the committee is concerned about is that everyone goes off and does their own safety thing, and it is not reported, and we don't know about it."

"I'm going to the meeting at Boekelo and I'm sure a lot will come out of that."

What about the influence of the new scoring system?

"I had a meeting with the top riders at Burghley, I wanted to talk to them face-to-face because they don't agree with the new scoring system. I still believe the new scoring system is fine and I don't believe that it has had any influence on the accidents, but in saying that I also accept that if the top riders in the world don't have confidence in the system, then as FEI eventing councillors, we have to be guided by that. The day any board or organising committee can't take notice of the people at the coal-face, the real experts at the time, then they are there for the wrong reasons."

I realise that this probably doesn't impact on the accidents, but if there is a review underway, is it time to look again at the length of roads and tracks, and the steeple?

"Of course that will happen. I was a little surprised at Burghley, they gave an extra two minutes in the ten minute box, but left the 30 seconds on the steeple. I would have thought it would be better to knock the 30 seconds off the steeple from four minutes thirty to four minutes and left the box as it is. My feeling is that the chase is still an integral part of the sport - it's the phase that does demand a certain galloping ability, otherwise you could end up with hunters doing the course... and maybe that's what we need, hunters, and that might be the way the sport is going to evolve, but as a traditionalist in the sport, my attitude is that the steeplechase is part of the test, to see if the horse can gallop at speed over fences that are designed to be jumped at speed. It is not as if we are asking them to jump vertical rails, but the horse has to have a good gallop to be able to achieve his 690 metres a minute over four minutes. Maybe for the lower grades we bring it down to 350, but it is a part of the warmup to the cross country. You talk to a lot of riders who say at One Day events they have a terrible problem, the horses are very hot - but at Three Day Events, where they have the steeple and the roads and tracks, the horses are better prepared to do the cross country afterwards. I disagree with an exhausting roads and tracks or an exhausting steeple, but it is just part of the traditional test, but if you want to go right back, it could be the charge of the military."

Vaughn Jefferis:
Vaughn Jefferis - World Champion in 1994 and still one of the top competitors in the world today.

"I hope we go back to the old scoring system. Clearly the speed is killing these people. Some of them have been unlucky, but one or two have been trying to go too fast, and they are just not skilled enough to do it - the sooner we get back to the old scoring system the better.

Michael Creber:
Michael Creber, a former Advanced level event rider, and now course builder at Adelaide**** and Spray Farm CIC.

"The British have been through this situation before, back in 93 when there were five riders killed in three months. They just had the same awful run. The problem is that there is no commonality that I can determine between the recent spate of fatal accidents. Some involve bounces, some involve oxers, some involve going too slow, some involve missing an oxer very badly and probably travelling very fast. But for God's sake, the bad news is that I'm still here, and I've missed a huge oxer so badly and done that fatal fall where the horse turns over and comes down upside down with you. He just happened to land beside me and roll the other way instead of rolling my way. It is not something that is new in the sport. It is a risk that has always been there."

You don't think that the new scoring system puts a lot more pressure on the middle order competitors to make time or fade right down the placings?

"If you look at the tragic fatalities, there is no commonality. All but two of them occurred under British national rules, which are the old scoring rules. There have certainly been some people in the CCI and CIC series who have been travelling crazy fast, not many, but it is certainly part of it, and in those cases, it has been the horses who paid the price. The human fatalities have probably eclipsed the fact that horses have been trashed. The attrition in horses at Saumur, the first time the new rules came out, was substantial, and that is as unacceptable as the human lives lost."

"The good course designers have been doing their best to avoid accidents for years. The idea of taking risks with people's lives, you honestly can't name me anyone who would do it at the top end of the sport."

But I can make the suggestion that even at the top end of the sport, some designers have seemingly been measuring their courses in a way that they can't be ridden?

"There are differences in terrain and riders have to take that into account - that's what being a horseman and an adult is all about. Courses have to be measured on the tightest rideable line, but it has to be a rideable line. It also depends on the level of demand on the fences. If you are building two star tracks, sensible two stars in a nice environment, you are going to get numerous horses coming in within the time, which changes the balance of the competition - if you are building a genuine four star, then you hope that very few people come in within the time, otherwise your competition lacks validity."

Will you do anything different at Adelaide this year as a result of the recent fatalities?

"The way we finish the course, we are going to be awfully safety conscious. Adelaide is an ongoing development - in developing this year's course I've been conscious of how last year's fences behaved, and I tried to come up with a challenge that is progressively more horse friendly, without compromising the test. We have used an enormous amount of huge timber, we've changed the profile of the fences that relate to the water so that horses will slide over them rather than glance over them, an enormous amount has gone into finish but I still can't get away from the reality of the event."

"We are going to consider the possibility of demolishable fences that requires a lot of philosophical deliberation on the part of the sport, and a great deal of research. At the moment, if a horse takes out an oxer made of 250 mm timber that falls about, in the way that would precipitate a tragic fall, then I am not sure it still would not precipitate a tragic fall, because I've got 400 kilogram lumps of timber flying through the air with the horse, and the horse is probably still going to come down - in a different way - and these lumps of timber may make it an equally dangerous situation. It is not something we should rush into."

"If we are going to devise fences that disintegrate on major impact, then we have to devise a standard as to when this happens. Once we've worked out how to stop the pieces of timber flying through the air, we have to work out at what point the jump breaks - and then do you eliminate the horse that breaks the fence? It's a definite consideration but it is going to take a while to come up with workable answers."

Lucinda Green:
Lucinda Green, World Champion, Olympic gold medallist, current British selector, and much-sought-after media commentator:

"I think if it has done nothing else, it is making us have an incredibly deep look at ourselves. Quite a few of us have been saying over the last few years, 'how much further can we push horses in the technical questions we ask them cross country'. None of these deaths are attributable to the courses, none of them are directly attributable to anything, that's what has been so incredibly difficult - to try and find a common denominator."

"The only thing I can do is stand back and try and take a much wider view of the whole thing. At one end we've got the very best riders, and they are incredibly good these days, being tested by some really serious questions. At the other end we've got the riders struggling around trying to be good enough to run round the bottom level, and in the middle somewhere there, the extreme questions from the top filter down - because you have to practice them somewhere. I just wonder if because of these extreme questions, and because everyone is so jolly good at answering them now, even in the levels on the way up, that the emphasis has gone onto the dressage. Riders have learnt how to do the cross country at each level - not all of them, but some of them, they are therefore studying the dressage more deeply - rather more deeply than I think anyone studies the cross country - creating a situation for themselves where their horses are so push button and disciplined from their dressage training, that they are lacking a certain element of thinking for themselves, a certain element of survival which is one of the horse's strongest instincts, because they have become so so obedient. They have had to become obedient for two reasons. Partly because the cross country demands such a high level of technical achievement, and partly because the riders are concentrating rather more than the balance requires on the dressage. I remember Jack Le Goff saying to me that if you took a horse above Medium level, into Prix St Georges, then they lost their talent across country - I think I understand that because a great deal of my horses' brilliance across country was that they did think for themselves. I did what I had to do as a rider, and they did what they had to do to survive it."

"I suspect our sport has got to a peak of asking such technical questions in the cross country and the dressage - I'm not quite sure where showjumping fits in right now - what we are taking away from them some of their natural ability to be brilliant. No horse wants to fall."

"You can't apply this thinking specifically to any of the tragedies we have had, but it is an underlying problem that we are developing, which may or may not be something to do with the tragedies we've had."

There are people who believe that the new scoring system is placing too much emphasis on going fast across country?

"I'd be as guilty as any of wanting that, because I am as keen as any to get the balance away from the dressage a little more - for the reasons I've outlined, not because I couldn't do it. I think there is a real danger in too much emphasis on the dressage, and I'm not sure it doesn't apply to the showjumping as well. You get your small tier of top riders that won't take a horse's 'self thought' away from him, they ride in such a way that the whole thing looks wonderful and the horse is able to think for himself, but you get a large number of the next grade down who have a horse they can dominate and damn well dominate it - and that's where the danger comes in because there are not many really good riders in our sport, unfortunately they get syphoned off to other sports."

What about the synthetic poles that shatter on impact?

"I think it's something that everyone is very keen to look into, but for what you save on the swings, I bet you lose on the roundabouts. Take Blyth Tait's fall at Burghley, the horse ricocheted off Blyth's leg and off the fence, if that fence had collapsed when the horse came full pelt into it, he would have pinned Blyth to the floor underneath him. The collapsible cardboard fence has some obvious attractions, although I think Simon Long would still have died at Burghley, I don't think it would have mattered, but it does become an engineering question. Let's face it we are in a lot of trouble because we've tried to make the sport so much safer than it used to be. We've got a lot of fences now that forgive rider errors that never did in my day, we've got a level of rider that is not as skilled as they were. Not at the top level, they are higher skilled, but the general level."

So should the qualifications be tougher before you are allowed to compete at that elite level?

"You'll always let some through won't you? The tougher you make the qualifications, the easier it is to leave out the horses and riders that should be there. They are slowly making the qualifications tougher, and they should go on slowly making them tougher, and that is probably one of the things that will come out of the current investigation, but it's not the only answer. Just as I don't believe the only answer is to make the fences easier - then you will swing the balance back to the dressage, and get back to the horses that can be dominated, and you are not going to improve the problem. The problem is that a lot of people don't know how to ride across country. The natural resources aren't there any more. Our sport grew in this country from hunting where you had plenty of practice across country. Now there are very few people who hunt, and very few hunts that actually go across country, they tend to run around barbed wire fences - unless you are from New Zealand you open gates rather than jump wire. The countryside has diminished so it is a little bit more difficult to practice that skill naturally. You have to go to a manufactured course, and you really only go to make sure your horse knows how to jump a ditch, or water or banks... You don't really go to teach yourself the art and skill of cross country riding. You do that in cross country, then who is there to teach you - no-one is necessarily watching except your owner, or friend or whatever. You've got no way of really learning both the science and the art of cross country. We used to have a way of learning with Lady Hugh Russell, but we don't have that since she retired. If you think about the amount of time and money that is spent on dressage and showjumping lessons - they don't spend that money on cross country training. I think that is a problem, we used to have a lot of it in my day - actually training cross country. It may sound silly to say that, but I think it is being ignored because it is difficult to teach, and difficult to learn. Cross country is the most dangerous element of the three phases, and we've been majoring away on the two phases that are easier to learn, in that you can do it in the field in front of you, and possibly at the same time as you are majoring in dressage and showjumping, you are taking away a vital ingredient that the cross country requires."