Tag Archives: USEA

How you can help Boyd Martin and the Team at True Prospect Farm

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UPDATE The horses that were hospitalized are showing real signs of progress in the last 36 hours. Check. Out this story on Eventing Nation for more info.

I cannot express in words the heartbreak I experienced this morning upon hearing the tragedy that has occurred at True Prospect Farm. The lives of all involved in this terrible incident will be irrevocably changed.

What can we do? Well reaching out and supporting our friends is going to be of critical importance over the weeks and months ahead. The other thing we can do is to donate.

At this stage for those of us in Australia or other parts of the world outside the USA, the easiest way is to donate to the True Prospect Recovery Fund. I have done this myself and urge you to do the same if you can.

Below are the details of the five ways you can support. Although some are only useful to those in the USA.

It’s important to remember that the tragedy at True Prospect this morning affected an incredible number of people.  Those who lost horses and their families will bear the brunt of the trauma, but everyone at True Prospect who was there last night will remember those moments for the rest of their lives.  Indeed everyone in the eventing community feels some loss today that so many great horses are no longer with us and at the sorrow felt by their connections.  

The eventing community is banding together today to help out.  Everyone who can help is on scene at True Prospect and New Bolton assisting in the relocation of the surviving horses, the recovery of the injured horses, and helping everyone involved.

As part of the recovery, there are multiple ways we can all band together from across Eventing Nation to help out.  If you are anything like me, you have felt a little helpless today hearing about the tragedy but not being there to help out.  Here is a quick guide to the relief funds and other ways to help out, please help spread the word: 

1) Boyd’s website has posted a link to a True Prospect/SCES relief fund set up through SCES that allows for tax-deductible donations.  The site explains: “This relief fund is a general fund set up to help everyone at Windurra LLC and True Prospect Farm, as well as our owners and riders who have been impacted by this tragedy.”  [Boyd’s blog and donation link]

2) There is also a True Prospect Farm Fire Recover Fund directly from True Prospect Farm.  You can pay with either a credit card or a Paypal account. [Information on the fund and donation link]

3) Denny Emerson is donating half of his royalties from his new book “How Good Riders Get Good” to help with the recovery.  Click here to buy the book.

4) PRO is putting together and online fundraising auction–we’ll have more details on that as it develops.

5) Everyone can also make donations through the American Horse Trials Foundation.  Boyd, Caitlin and Lillian are already listed there, and donations are tax-deductible. As will all AHTF donations, be sure to write the riders name on a note with the check, not the actual check.

The American Horse Trials Foundation
221 Grove Cove Road
Centreville, MD 21617
Phone: (443) 262-9555
Email: ahtf@att.net

As a final good news note, we have been getting a lot of emails checking on Remington–he was turned out overnight and is fine.  Go donate.

Horse World Gives Back

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Horse World Gives Back is bringing the horse world together in a fund raising drive to benefit the people and horses affected by the recent flooding and tornadoes all throughout the country. Let’s show the world the what a caring and compassionate people we are!

Horse World Gives Back has been organized by the Horse Radio Network and many of their media partners.

2011 FEI Risk Management Seminar Minutes and Reports

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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

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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.

Eventing Radio Episode 116 by Bit of Britain

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David & Karen O’Connor join Chris and Max to explain the philosophy behind David’s bid to become the next US team coach & Chef d’Equipe and what that would mean to both of them. Laura Kraut and Samantha Lendl join Karen as they explain a new PRO Derby Cross event taking place in March. All that and more on this week’s show so tune in right here…

Eventing Radio Episode 116 by Bit of Britain – Show Notes and Links:

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Eventing Radio Episode 114 by Bit of Britain

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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:

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Eventing Radio Episode 113

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The 2010 USEA Groom of the Year recipient, Elizabeth Crowder, tell us how she earned her stripes. We hear tributes to Rebecca Broussard from Karen O’Connor and Jo Whitehouse. Plus the news of this week and more with co-host Kerry Millikin all right here…

Eventing Radio Episode 113 – Show Notes and Links:

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A turning point? I hope

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Sebastian Steiner died on 18 September 2010

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.

Eventing Radio Episode 110

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Two voices of wisdom, William Micklem and Denny Emerson, share some things that are on their mind that help keep us on our toes. And Max Corcoran is back in the co-host chair fresh from the USEA Convention. Another great show that’s definitely worth a listen.

Eventing Radio Episode 110 – Show Notes and Links:

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Eventing Radio Episode 108 – Jimmy Wofford & Lucinda Green

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James Wofford is our guest this week as part of the Inspirational People Series. Listen in here.
Eventing Radio Episode 108 – Show Notes and Links:

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