Riding Kills Horses, Too
Reader Comments
Joanne, thank you!
I just heard about Rolex and I'm going to quote you in a new blog entry for tomorrow/Monday Ap. 26th. Bonnie
Riding Kills Horses, Too
Two more 4* horses killed over the weekend at the Ky Horse Park, it's absolutely sickening. We were standing right next to jump 13 when The Quiet Man crashed, critically injuring himself. Both wrecks were "rotational". It is very frustrating for me to see this time and time again, hearing only lame excuses from the sport's leaders. The courses leave no margin for error, and the penalty for mistakes is often either death or serious injury to horse and/or rider. No living thing is perfect, we have no right to put an animal in the position where one mistake of either itself or its rider will lead to death. The time has come for the eventing world to accept that the fences need to be able to come down. Ensuring that the fence can come down safely when necessary and not crush a downed rider/horse is a simple mechanical engineering problem, not exactly rocket science. There's no excuse for rotational falls, they CAN be avoided!
Now of course this will take money, just take it out of the flower budget... Along with building safer fences, they also need to reduce the max width allowed and the number of fences on the course. 20-25 should be sufficient. If the sport wants to test endurance more than this will allow, then require the riders to run a marathon after they finish their ride. that way, if anyone keels over with a heart attack, it will be the human, who has the free will, if not the intelligence, to decide what is appropriate risk.
