My opinion is that a lot of different people and roles and organisations are. We have the FEI who makes the rules, the organiser, the course designer, the technical delegate, the stewards, the ground jury, the veterinary commission and, of course, the riders. Of course, some have roles that can influence safety before the competition starts, whilst others have roles before and during the competition. In some cases, influence on safety may occur after the event in relation to lessons learned, which may impact safety for future events.
Eventing cross-country is relatively dangerous. Let’s not pretend it’s not. But the aim on the day is to mitigate risk as much as possible. We’ve managed to do this successfully at all Olympic Games in hot climates since Atlanta 1996, and I’m privileged and proud to have played a lead role in that effort. But I’m still nervous until the last horse is safely home. One important aspect of horse safety is the competition surface and there has been a huge research effort backed by the FEI since London 2012 to try to improve the nature and consistency of the competition surface in order to reduce injury risk. This is possibly easier with artificial surfaces in a limited area and more challenging with a grass XC track. This year’s Badminton XC course, for example, covers 6450m, and at, let’s say, an average width of 20m, it represents 129,000 square metres. Compare that to the area of a full-size arena for showjumping and dressage of around 8000 square metres, 16x larger.
Eventing often takes place in less than ideal conditions – hard ground, soft ground, very cold weather, hot weather. A particularly worrying combination is soft ground AND hot weather. This combination can lead to very tired horses. We saw the impact of very soft ground at Badminton in 2023 (Link) and at the FEI European Eventing Championships in August 2023 at Haras du pin in France. At the latter, the course was shortened due to the heavy rain leading to soft going. But it was also warm on XC day – between 20° and 29°C. So if the going is soft at Badminton again this year what is the correct decision? Reduce the distance/remove jumps, increase the time allowed or both? A knowledge of physiology and practical experience both indicate the correct decision is to reduce the distance and number of jumping efforts. Again, this is what we do for hot weather, which has the same effect as heavy going – it makes horses tire earlier in the course.
So, on the day, who is responsible for horse (and rider safety)? If the ground jury, course designer, FEI officials, TD, vets, organiser and rider representative make the right decision before the start of the XC (as all of these can have input, although I believe from experience the final decision rests with the Ground Jury), then that’s the first step. Once the competition starts, it’s down to riders to ride to conditions and be prepared to ease up or retire if their horses are struggling, and if they don’t, it’s up to the Ground Jury to intervene and stop them. Of course, stopping a horse does protect them, but it’s not a decision any Ground Jury wants to take lightly. The argument can always be made that the horse was tired, but the rider was going to ease up and get the horse safely home.
And do we need to worry about the weather on Saturday? One of my favourite topics! Interestingly it could be 22-23°C on Saturday at Badminton. Not a heatwave. But here’s some food for thought. Many of the riders will have been training and doing their fitness work early morning when temperatures have been 5-10°C in the past month (the official Met Office average for April for the UK was 6.7°C). So on Saturday they could be going XC in temperatures 16°C higher than they trained in. That’s quite an increase. For example, in Tokyo for the Olympics, the temperature were only around 10-15°C higher than in the UK.
So my answer to the question “Who’s responsible for horse safety?” is pretty much anyone who is involved and has influence, but ultimately the riders and, in my experience, most riders take this responsibility incredibly seriously!
Here is some further information that you may find useful:
- Webinar – Dr Heather Cameron-Whytock on Horse Falls, 3 studies, what have we learned? – 02/11/23
- Podcast – Interview with Dr Heather Cameron-Whytock – Making eventing safer for our horses
- Has Dressage Become Too Influential In Eventing?
- Mud, Martingales and Margins – Badminton 2023 Cross-Country Analysis
- Badminton 2022 – A scientific perspective of the Badminton cross country course
- Badminton Horse Trials 2022 – Dressage science
