The Safety Pin Rule | Keep, Amend Or Remove?

Astier Nicolas picks up 21 penalties at Belton CIC*** For Breaking A Frangible Pin

But Negotiates The Fence Safely To Complete

Some of the fall out from the problems on cross country at Rolex Kentucky, surrounds a FEI rule, and the 21 penalty points it imposes on any competitor breaking a frangible pin. A fate suffered by both Clark Montgomery & Andrew Nicholson at fence 9. In a recent podcast interview Andrew Nicholson made some interesting observations about how this can influence things depending on how a horse with a particular type of jumping style likes to moves over a fence, but he seemed to accept this was now part of the job and you just have to deal with it.

Hats, Safety Pins & Riding Safely | Education, Education, Education

Have Fun Cross Country But Be Safe

Eventing has become very safety conscious over the last 5-10 years, and quite rightly so in light of fatalities that occurred in the preceding years. An Australian Assistant Technical Delegate, John Lechner, even devotes an entire blog to eventing safety, and so vehemently champions the safety mantle he's known as "Eventing Safety John". (he scares me!) Anyway on to my point for this post.....

A number of things in recent weeks have been discussed or published on the safety topic, and then there's a visit I made to America earlier this year, and a somewhat eye opening spectacle at a one day event.

Dressage | Not As Safe As It First Looks

Firstly, the subject of hard hats in the dressage phase was raised again recently, this time by ECOGOLD. I have to admit, although I've not always worn a hat myself in the past (I do now) whilst working on the flat, I've always found it a little ridiculous that all the teaching and education we do from Pony Club right through to young riders, hammers home "always wear a hard hat", yet in upper level competition (where our role models sit) we throw caution to the wind. Perhaps the safety forum planned for January by Riders4Helmets will tackle some of these points.

But then I have always found Eventing really doesn't seem to take dress code seriously at all, my favourite gripe at the moment is the ridiculous bibs situation, in which case I really don't see why we have top hats in the Dressage phase, so perhaps it's time to make hard hats mandatory purely for dress sense!

Burghley Horse Trials - A Great Result

Caroline & Lenamore | Burghley 2010 Winners

As you will have read all over the internet already, Lenamore is a very popular winner, and an extremely well deserved win it is too. I've always liked this horse and rider, since I first saw them at Badminton in 2005, and I'm probably a little bias as Lenamore is a lovely grey!

A win like this is bound to lift the spirits going into the World Equestrian Games, and I've long thought the New Zealanders are on song this year, and have an excellence chance of at least a team medal, and Andrew Nicholson should be able to drum up a good dressage score without the day-to-day distractions he would usually face here at home.

The Frangible Pin Saga continues.....

Apologies, my head is still full of Badminton and something I wrote about last year has cropped up again, the Frangible Pin. Back then it was all about some bright spark at the FEI wanting to add penalty points for breaking one, as if it were showjumping, this time it's more about improvements.

They [Frangible Pins] are undoubtedly making a positive contribution to safety and a new design was tried out at Badminton Horse Trials in 2010 (see picture, courtesy of the Badminton website). The young Chinese rider Alex Hau Tain experienced the effect of these when falling off his first horse, Jeans, this year.

There is talk again of introducing penalty points for breaking these, which is of course a ridiculous suggestion. I notice 'The Captain' suggests £90 is expensive - Gatcombe ticket sales must be down on last year!

Improvements in safety are priceless, and it beats having to having to soften the courses any further.

Break A Pin and leave the competition

Who came up with that bright idea? From today the FEI has introduced a rule that states those who break a frangible pin on the Cross Country will be eliminated. As many others have already commented this really isn't going to work from a practical prospective and has no real benefit or positive affect on the competition. 

Thankfully, I understand, this is going to be reviewed this month with the possibility of this being changed to a 25 point penalty for breaking a fence pin.

Now I can see some point in doing this, but it still seems crazy to penalise riders for triggering a safety feature, especially when someone on course before you could easily weaken the pin putting you at great dis-advantage. 

For me the big question is "Do we really need this rule?" It's not like the one fall rule which could arguably be introduced on safety grounds (albeit without solid evidence). After all, if you fall off, you haven't got any chance of winning have you?

For more info on frangible pins see: Frangible Pins