Observations and reverse pins

I know it has been a long time since I have posted, my overall impression is that little has happened recently in the way of fence safety or changes. I know this may not be the case as the FEI tends to work on things with limited consultation or discussion in the wider eventing community.

I was recently in the UK for Burghley and Blenheim. This was a great experience and I believe gave me a great snapshot of top level eventing in the worlds most prolific eventing nation. What I did observe surprised me.

First up, there are only frangible pins used in the UK, both traditional and reverse. In addition as observed by none other than Lucinda Green lots of brush fences. I will come back to that in a moment.

So I was in the UK, I really wasn’t expecting anything other than the frangible pins given that British Eventing had invested so heavily in their development. That said I observed something I really hadn’t expected. Every time a pin (mostly reverse) was damaged there was a hold on course of 10 to 20 mins. Let me be clear these holds were not related to injured horses or riders although in a couple of incidences this occurred.

These holds and delays of up to 20 mins were purely for the rebuilding of the reverse pinned fences by the course building specialists. Reverse pinning is complicated, needs specialist tools and takes time to reset. At Blenheim there was about 5-10 of these holds on XC on two days of XC. The field at Blenheim was relatively small for a British event even though the individual class sizes were big there was only three classes.

On a big day in the UK there can be hundreds on XC. These delays must be excruciating with large numbers, every delay holds up competitors, officials and volunteers making a long day even longer.

Every single pinned fence I saw could have been built using the Mim NewEra clip, there is still a lack of understanding in this device in Europe, not just the UK. Importantly the Mim can be replaced and reset in seconds, not by a specialist course builder but by a volunteer fence judge. If you can lift the rail back into place you can restore the fence.

With the 3-4 minute XC intervals I observed in the UK, there would be no holds on course to rebuild any of these fences.

I also caught up with Lucinda Green and she talked about how the use too much brush was also having and unintended consequence. I won’t do any analysis on that but leave it to Lucinda to explain in the video.

Thanks

John

USEF to support frangible devices

Occasionally I get some really good news sent to me very anonymously, sometimes it isn’t so good, but this one is.  For many years the USEF has been a leader in the introduction of Frangible Devices in the sport of Eventing. They are one of the few Federations to require Frangible Devices on certain types of  fences and also one of a very few that actually subsidize the  cost of using the devices.

Until now the USEF has only funded the British developed Frangible Pin. But a little birdy tells me this is all about to change.  As of very soon, the USEF will broadly support “Frangible Devices” and will subsidise the cost of the Mim NewEra System and I believe the Prolog, (while the Mim is a definite, I am not 100% sure on the Prolog).

Side on view of the Mim Team's Adjustable Post and Rail

I honestly believe that the Mim system is the best available product on the market today.  This is great news for US Eventing and I hope that the leadership shown by the USEF will be adopted by of other Federations including my own which lags behind in this area.

This change for the USEF will be reflected in changes to the design rules in the US that mandate the use of Frangible Pins on certain fences to more broadly Approved Frangible Devices.

Congratulations to the USEF for being world leaders in this area, as I understand it the push for this change came from the very top.

Lets hope we see more of this.

ESJ

2011 FEI Risk Management Seminar Minutes and Reports

My apologies for not getting onto this earlier but I have been away in sunny Florida.

So the FEI have released the minutes, participant list, presentations and fall statistics from the meeting held in late January. We must remember that this annual meeting is primarily National Safety Officers and is called the “FEI Eventing Risk Management Seminar”.

I must say up front that I was told in no uncertain terms prior to the meeting that the meeting was not about frangible devices or moves to develop an industrial standard. Well this seems to be exactly the case. I found a total of three references, in all of the eight documents published. All of these references were passing and include NO detail at all.

Personally I see this as a glaring omission and I will explain why.

For at least the last 12 months and for longer, but perhaps more anecdotally, we have been compiling data on the types of frangible devices used, types of fences they were used in, did they deploy or did they fail to deploy.

These are important statistics, there is NO statistical information included in the FEI Statistic on falls, fences and injuries that identify frangible devices. Just so I am being clear, there is absolutely no statistical information released by the FEI on the use of frangible fences.

I believe this information is critical to our plans and future direction. Let me explain a little first. At an FEI Competition, the TDs and CD need to fill in an extremely detailed form outlining the details of every fence included in the competition. Using this information we should be able to identify if you are more likely to have a horse fall off a left or right bend, in or out of water, up or down a hill, at a portable or fixed fence and also at a frangible or non-frangible fence.

We can also identify using the report, the profile of fences that have a statistically higher chance of causing a horse fall. We should also be able to identify if a particular profile of fence has a lower chance of producing a horse fall if a frangible device is used (and perhaps even which type of frangible device has the lowest chance of a horse fall).

All of this information is important for Officials to understand when analyzing a course and for CDs when preparing a course. Failure of frangible devices to deploy is also important information, especially when the resulting fall results in serious injury or worse. I can think of four really famous examples of failure to deploy in the last 12 months.

Was the failure to deploy a case of the perfect storm of bad circumstances or simply, a less appropriate device being used?

What I do know is that this type of information need not be highly sanitised to the point the information becomes useless, but disseminated to the people who need to know, firstly the NSO’s and secondly to the Officials who are the Individuals responsible and are responsible when something goes wrong.

I really do hope that more time was spent on discussing frangible devices and that some lost report suddenly appears on the FEI website, but I do not hold out much hope. It seems we are destined for another year of sanitised, compartmentalised and fragmented information about the sport.

One other issue I see with the statistics is that they only represent the FEI competitions. I know there are issues with getting complete information from National Federations, but hey, a complete picture on the sport would be nice. For instance the report mentions that there have been seven rider fatalities in the last 7 years. Unfortunately when you add the national competitions into the mix that number goes from 7 to 27 almost four times the rate.

Statistics are important and we must continue to work on them, however we need to extract and disseminate more meaningful and practical, applicable data that a Course Designer or Technical Delegate can use in the field where it really matters.

The documents can be read and downloaded on the FEI website here.

Risk Management & Frangible Device meetings

Hi guys,

Just a quick post to let you all know I have not forgotten about these meetings and reporting on how they went. They were on 27, 28, & 29 of January. To date the “Cone of Silence” has been most effective and I have almost no information.

What I do know is that at least one other person tried to participate in the FEI Risk Management Meeting and despite a demonstrated track record in the area of Eventing Safety was excluded. Additionally, there are whispers of discontent amongst some present and the whole “cone of silence”. Hopefully this will lead to some change and more open and transparent discussions in the future.

I can’t even tell you if the ProLog guys were invited to the second TRL meeting after being excluded from the first despite the fact that the FEI stated the meeting included all known manufacturers of frangible devices.

As of now, I have no other information to share.

If you have more information and would like to share it anonymously with me drop me a line, your confidence will be respected 100%.

eventingsafety @ gmail.com

In the meantime, please rider safely and wear your helmet.

2011 Eventing Risk Management Seminar in Greenwich

On January 29 & 30 2011, the Annual Eventing Risk Management Seminar was held in Greenwich, the site of the 2012 London Olympic Games Equestrian Events.

This meeting is an important event on the future of Safety (Risk Management) in our sport and brings together National Safety Officers and other interested parties from across the Eventing world.

What was discussed is unclear at this stage as the minutes and papers from the Seminar are yet to be released and although I have placed a number of calls and emails to people I know were present at this stage I am none the wiser.

There was a press release from the FEI that can be seen here. However at this stage we are short on detail.

For one I have been trying for a period of time now to obtain a copy of the “FEI Eventing Risk Management Action Plan” mentioned in the press release and the best answer I have obtained is that it is being updated and will be made available when the updating is complete.  To my knowledge although in the press release it states that “launched in January 2010” it has not been released publicly before now. So this will be an eagerly awaited document.

In addition as I have mentioned previously there was a meeting on the 28th of January 2011 at the offices of TRL in London to discuss the creation of an industrial standard for Frangible Devices to be used in Eventing.

Again more information has been promised at some stage, however in the meantime the only mention of this meeting having occurred from the FEI is a paragraph (below) in the FEI Monthly Review from November 2010. Here is a copy of the full document on the IEOC website.

Eventing: meeting at Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), Wokingham (GBR), 10 NovemberThe meeting took place to discuss the possible creation of industrial standards for frangible / deformable Cross Country fences.Among the 18 participants were the Chairman of the FEI Eventing Committee, researchers from the universities of Bristol (GBR) and Kentucky (USA), as well as MIM Construction AB (SWE) and several top Cross Country Course Designers.Several frangible and deformable devices were presented. Discussions included possible definitions of tests to be undertaken (ie. forces to be measured) for such fences and enabled the participants to set out the principles for a first draft, which will be further reviewed at a meeting in January 2011.

That said I have seen a copy of the minutes of this meeting in November and it sounds promising.  However I will reiterate my previous comments that only a select few were present at the meeting, the team from ProLog were a notable exception despite some very promising research conducted that they have real capacity to stop rotational falls before they even begin.

I think that is enough said until I can obtain copies of the documentation.

Yours in Eventing and please wear your safety helmet, securely fastened at all times when mounted.

John

Eventing Radio Episode 114 by Bit of Britain

Robert Costello makes his debut as co-host as Phillip Dutton returns to tell us how he and Robert have joined forces to bid for the most important role in US eventing for the national squad. Take a listen right here…

Eventing Radio Episode 114 by Bit of Britain – Show Notes and Links:

• Show Host: Chris Stafford
• Guest Co-host: Bobby Costello, Olympic veteran, Pan Am Games team gold medalist and coach and trainer – www.tanglewoodfarmeventing.com
• Guest: Phillip Dutton, Olympic & WEG Veteran, Developing Coach of the Year, Leading Rider of the Year, Evie’s husband, father of twin daughters – www.phillipdutton.com
• Guest: John Nunn – www.bitofbritain.com
• News: Helmet Safety Symposium – www.riders4helmets.com
• News: British Eventing Announces New Chairman; Amanda Ratcliffe – www.britisheventing.com

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A turning point? I hope

Sebastian Steiner died on 18 September 2010

In a little over two week there will be two meetings of critical importance to the future of Eventing.

The first on 28 January is a follow up to a meeting that occurred on the 10th of November. This meeting is working on “discuss the possible creation of industrial standards for frangible/deformable Cross Country fences to be used in FEI competitions”.

This is exciting. What is not exciting is that very few people participated in the meeting, the meeting is not open to all concerned or it seems anyone outside the United Kingdom bar a select few from Europe and the USA.

In addition, the minutes from this meeting have not been published publicly for the wider Eventing community, the goals, papers and responses are locked away in a secure part of the FEI Family website.

One can only hope that they will release further information following the 28 January meeting.

The second very important meeting is the annual gathering of all National Safety Officers at Greenwich on 29-30 January.  This meeting too, does not encourage input from outside the select group of NSOs and others by invitation (mine it seems got lost in the mail).  I am confident that at the NSOs meeting they will discuss the aforementioned industrial standard for frangible/deformable cross country fences at the NSOs meeting.

What I hope is, will we turn the corner, will we move away from the situation of paranoia, closed doors, secret meetings and secure password controlled minutes?

Will we see publicly for the first time, a written simple and concise plan, that outlines in plain English (and French as well as many other languages), our goals, KPI’s and statistics for moving forward.

I am not hopeful, it only takes five minutes on Google to know that this conversation was happening, in the same tone, with big plans in the late nineties.  Have we improved? I think so, have we learnt anything, technically & scientifically YES, from a Public Relations and Management point of view, it seems not.

I recently came across a list, it is a list that will chill the bones of any Eventer or Eventing supporter.  The list contains the names and details of EVERY death of a rider, that has made it into the public domain since about 1997. Some of these names I have heard before but many I hadn’t.

For me personally, this list and the people whose lives were lost in our sport, this is why I do this, stick my neck out.  Unfortunately, every year on average just under four lives are lost in our sport.

2010 was an average year as we said goodbye to Dirk Grouwels (48) of Belgium in March, Elena Timonina (16) of Russia in May, Robin Donaldson (64) of Great Britain in September and Sebastian Steiner (22) of Austria in September.

I hope, dream and pray (I’m not very good at it) that 2011 will not be an average year.  Will we find some miracle cure in 2011 in the Industrial Standards?  I don’t think so, but I do hope that we can be more open, inclusive and forthright about the challenges our sport faces and how we will tackle this as a team.

Can we continue to add names to this horrific list and look at ourselves in the mirror and honestly say with hand on heart, I did everything in my power to stop adding to this list.

Believe me I haven’t forgotten about our horses and those that have given there lives for the sport.  Personally I have been around to see three of these, three too many and I know how tragic it is.  But, if we can’t get motivated enough to stem the list of human deaths, how can we even start on the list of horse deaths.

One final thing I ask, I want to ensure that this plea is read by every single person who will be in those meetings.  Please share the list as far and wide as possible, post it to your Facebook, email it to your Eventing contacts or Tweet it, whatever you can do to help spread the word will be truly appreciated.

Hopefully in late January, we can move past the excuses for not doing something, focus on the list of the past and prepare a plan for the future.

If you can bear it, there is a fairly comprehensive list on Horsetalk of both horses and riders.

Badminton – Leading the way and stepping up to the plate

Recently I leveled a direct criticism at all of the Four Star Events as NOT one included any in depth information of any kind on their website as to the safety devices used on their XC course.  My premise was that as the Four Stars, riders and other event organisers look up to them so seeing that a 4* is doing it would help promote to others to do more too.  Only one event responded to my criticism and in fact, they promised to do something about it.

That event was Badminton and last night I received this live to the story, where Badminton Director Hugh Thomas talks about safety.  I applaud Badminton, for taking the lead, I will also be preparing a story on the safety utilised at Adelaide last week.

Thank you Hugh and thank you to Monty White, who produced the video.

This is the full story on the Badminton Blog, and below is the interview with Hugh Thomas

2010 Radio Show Episode 118 by SUCCEED

Daily radio coverage of the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games continues with a wrap up of the eventing competition as Gina Miles joins us. Plus, we have numerous other interviews for you as we conclude the eventing coverage from WEG. Listen in…

2010 Radio Show Episode 118 by SUCCEED – Show Notes and Links:

• Hosts: Samantha Clark and Glenn the Geek
• Location: The International Equestrian Festival in downtown Lexington. Recording at 7:00 PM every night. Stop down and join us.
• Guest: Amy and William Fox-Pitt
  
• Guest: Jose Ortelli
• Guest: Amy Atkins
  
• Guest: Capt. Geoff Curran
  
• Guest: Gina Miles
• Guest: Frances Stead
• Guest: Jessica Phoenix
• Guest: Teresa Stopford-Sackville
• Coverage: Follow all the coverage of the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games on the Horse Radio Network.

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Eventing Radio Episode 100 – Final Day Jumping

The final special episode of eventing coverage from the 2010 Alltech World Equestrian Games. Chris is joined by some very special guests to give you a wrap up of the days events. This was recorded in front of a live audience at the Alltech Experience in the Kentucky Horse park. Listen in…

Eventing Radio Episode 100 – Show Notes and Links:

• Show Host: Chris Stafford
• Photo Credit:
• Guest: Lucinda Green – For informationa about Lucinda’s US Clinic schedule, please email: atateishi@seabreeze.ca
• Guest: Charles Runcie, BBC

• World Equestrian Games Eventing Radio Show Recording Schedule – recording at the Alltech Pavilion Stage: (Recorded versions should be available within three hours of recording.)
  • Sept 30: Recording 4:30-5:30 PM
  • Oct 1: Recording 4-5 PM
  • Oct 2: Recording 4:30-5:30 PM
  • Oct 3: Recording 4:30-5:30 PM
• Coverage: Follow all the coverage of the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games on the Horse Radio Network.

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