David O’Connor speaking at the 2018 FEI Sports Forum. Screenshot via FEI.
The seventh annual FEI Sports Forum took place March 26-27 at FEI Headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, with more than 250 delegates from 50 nations attending to discuss and debate the future of equestrian sport. Policies and rules discussed at the FEI Sports Forum will be put to vote at the annual FEI General Assembly in November.
David O’Connor, chair of both the FEI Eventing Committee and the FEI Risk Management Steering Group, led a session yesterday to provide updates on the latest developments within eventing risk management, as well as evaluating statistics from 2017.
FEI competitions have increased 60% in the last nine years, and starters have grown 40%. During that time, horse falls have been reduced from 1.69% of starters in 2008 to 1.38% in 2017. Rotational falls have been reduced from .30% of falls in 2008 to .17% of falls in 2017.
In 2017, 43 serious injuries were recorded at FEI competitions, 18 of which were concussions. Injury categories will be reviewed in 2018 to increase the accuracy of how types of injuries are recorded in the FEI database.
Interestingly, the rider fall rate at national levels has averaged about 3% of starters or lower since 2011 for Australia, Great Britain, Germany, France and the U.S., yet the fall rate at FEI levels in these countries averages at 5.34%.
“Why is the national level so much lower than the FEI level when on most of these occasions the person is actually jumping the same course?” David asked.
“The initial look into it is this is mainly a psychological side of people being more competitive and wanting to take a cut at it more at an international level, or going after an MER. They are basically jumping the same actual exercises, but then in national competitions and international competitions there is a difference in the risk management side.”
The FEI database now contains 670 fence description forms cataloguing more than 21,000 fences, in addition to 1,100 fall reports and 700 fence analyses from cross country courses around the world.
“Every single jump is catalogued and put into the data system, and then you can start to see trends as to which types of fences cause the most incidents,” David said.
For example, when trakehners were identified as a type of fence with a higher fall rate, course designers were able to raise the ground line, which ultimately reduced the number of falls at trakehners.
The FEI is also working to develop an FEI Coaching System for Eventing, with will provide a standard cross country coaching module to be used across all National Federations. Only nine of 17 National Federations surveyed in 2017 currently have eventing coaching modules with specific content about how to train athletes and horses in eventing.
Lastly, the FEI is looking at implementing a medical suspension and return-to-play rule for riders who suffer both concussions or serious injuries while competing.
You can watch David’s entire presentation in the video below. Click here to view the slide show with detailed statistics from his presentation.
Click here for a full breakdown of sessions held at the 2018 FEI Sports Forum.
