Point-Two Air Jackets

Getting back to physical safety precautions, the Point-Two Air Jacket is an excellent way to reduce the injuries that many riders suffer when they fall off their horses. Originally developed for motorcyclists, the Point-Two Air Jacket is an inflatable vest that protects critical areas of the body, including the ribs, collar, neck, back, and vital organs according to this article. It works much like an airbag in a car and uses an air canister to inflate the vest in 0.1 seconds. A ripcord attached to the saddle triggers the canister as soon as the rider begins to fall from the horse and the vest inflates. According to this article which was written in 2009, vests in the United States cost $750 with each replacement canister costing $22.50 and the ripcord being sold separately. Personally, I think a great addition to the rules of eventing in all nations would be making the Point-Two Air Jacket mandatory for all competitors.

Licenses and Proposed Scoring Changes

I've had a recent hiatus, as you all can probably tell, due to time constraints and a lot of discouragement regarding this topic. It's a narrow and difficult topic to research and almost all of the information I've found recently, while incredibly helpful, is dated at about 2008, the time of the last summer Olympics in Beijing. It appears that nobody seems to be interested in eventing and all of the safety issues along with it, until the Olympics roll around. It's too bad I'm not doing this research project next semester, huh?

Anyway, I've stumbled upon a couple of potential changes to the sport that may alleviate some of the safety problems that are being faced and neither of them directly impact the way courses are designed or the wallets of the eventing bigwigs. The first article deals with requiring the licensing of riders at four star events. This new measure would record dangerous riding, disciplinary offenses, and medical records of each rider in an attempt to curb and hold accountable reckless riders. While this seemed like a viable option in 2008 that was being considered, I have not found any recent information on it and it does not appear to have been implemented.

The second article is quite long and detailed and provides excellent statistics on rotational falls and injuries and fatalities of both horses and riders. One of the interesting proposals of this article is a new scoring system that is less ambiguous about the reason for eliminations during competitions and would allow future researchers to compile more accurate statistics about the number and nature of falls during a competition. The current system allows certain types of falls and fatalities to hide behind vague labels such as "elimination." The current system and proposed system looks like this:

A Visual Demonstration of Frangible Pins at Work

This video provides a visual example of how frangible pins work and really helped me to fully understand the concept. As the horse hits the obstacle, the pins break, causing the fence to collapse and the horse's momentum to change. Now, the horse no longer has enough momentum to flip entirely over and the possibility of the rider being crushed or pinned beneath the animal is avoided. This video was produced by the USEA (United States Eventing Association).

Rotational Falls

 

This video gives a visual demonstration of what frangible pins were designed to prevent - a rotational fall, in which the horse, unable to clear the fence, essentially "trips" and flips over the fence. Both horse and rider were uninjured after this particular episode, but for many who suffer these kinds of falls, that is not the case. These types of falls often cause spinal damage and can be fatal for both horse and rider. Frangible pins were developed to prevent such falls from happening.