It is with great sadness that we have to report a further two deaths of equestrians involved in eventing, which makes it a total of three fatalities since Rosie Williams took over as CEO of British Eventing (BE) in 2023.
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Sophie Fouracre at Hartpury 2023
©Harveywetdog |
Details are currently rightly sparse, but we do know Sophie Fouracre died at Swalcliffe Park riding Rhubarbsfox Brittania and Kerry Donoghue died at Penrith riding Carneyhaugh Rua. The two combinations are quite different; Sophie, who has experience at 5 star, was riding a 5 year old inexperienced horse at BE90. Kerry's horse was a 16 year old with a wide range of experience, having previously been ridden by Padraig McCarthy, David Doel and Jess Corser. Kerry's competition record suggests she was using the horse to move herself up to Novice this year.
There are no details publicly available concerning the type of fence or the type of fall involved in the two accidents.
BE likes to describe itself as the gold standard of eventing and justifies the cost of eventing with BE based on the safety standards that it sets.
Why then do we continue to lose riders in this way?
Of course, as was concluded in the case of Georgie Campbell, eventing is a high risk sport and accidents will happen. We can’t argue with that.
But what should sort a gold standard organisation from the rest is the way that they learn from such accidents to prevent them from happening again.
At the centre of such learning should be an open reporting culture which is prepared to examine these incidents, no matter how painful, professionally and impartially.
Once again course design, ground conditions, competitor training, preparedness and experience (of both horse and rider) need to come under the spotlight.
But most importantly the findings from these investigations need to be made public in order for the whole eventing family to understand and appreciate the risks they are taking each weekend and what can happen if mitigations are not appropriate or fail.
In a post on social media someone said that people were aware of the risks they were taking and I replied by say that I suspect people believe that "it won't happen to me". I added that it was down to BE to explain that it could.
Over to you British Eventing.
Links:
The future for eventing
Lessons learned at Bicton
Ethical safety case
An open reporting culture - some way to go
Georgie Campbell - a terrible tragic accident
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©Harveywetdog/Author - David Robinson CEng FIET
David spent approaching 50 years in Her Majesty's Electricity Supply Industry before retiring
He was part of the highly successful design team on the Sizewell B Nuclear Power Station Project before spending 25 years producing safety cases to keep our aging AGR fleet generating for the good of the nation
He is responsible for the Harveywetdog YouTube Channel which he maintains as an outlet for his creative talents
David has twice experienced blood cancer treatment but absolutely refuses to be a victim
All views are of course his own but might be influenced by the medication he's had to take
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