What about this rider fall? Photo courtesy of Caz
Sara Lieser from the Chronicle is at the USEF convention and this morning she posted an article about the USEF Board’s decision yesterday to vote down the one fall rule modification which would have allowed riders at all levels to continue after a fall provided that they maintained control of their horse and did not require medical attention. The article is a good recap of the arguments on both sides of the issue that have been discussed in depth since the original one fall and you’re out rule was adopted. On one hand you have Malcolm Hook and others saying that no fall is inconsequential and information on concussions tells us that even an innocuous looking fall could put the rider in a dangerous situation if they continue riding and fall off again. On the other hand, riders like Karen O’Connor point out that there are a number of inconsistencies in the current fall rule such as allowing multiple falls in warmup and this push led the Technical Committee to make the rule change consistent for all levels when they met earlier this week. The Technical Committee vote was 9 to 7, and Sara published the committee members for and against the change in the vote:
For the rule change:
Kevin Baumgardner
Bobby Costello
Phillip Dutton
Sarah Kelly
D.C. McBroom
Gina Miles
Kerry Millikin
Karen O’Connor
Brian Sabo
Opposed:
Wayne Quarles
Gretchen Butts
Roger Haller
Mike Huber
Robert Kellerhouse
Tom Angle
Marjorie Molloy
As we know, the rule change was voted down by the USEF Safety Committee, which put it before the USEF Board as a rule change that was barely approved by the Technical Committee and opposed by the Safety Committee. Ultimately the USEF Board Members, particularly non-eventers were uncomfortable making the change considering that we eventers apparently couldn’t even make up our minds. Sara writes that the Board tried to postpone the vote, but eventers pushed for a vote which ultimately failed by a wide margin.
Personally, I think both sides of the issue have very legitimate points. For me the issue is about where to draw the line for the acceptable level of risk that we take as eventers. I agree with the point that we cannot know for sure whether a fall is innocuous immediately after the fall. But are we going to prevent people who fall off from riding their bicycles or dirt bikes around the event without a helmet on, are we going to prevent them from driving home that night because there’s a further risk of a concussion? The safest thing we could do as eventers is to take up golf. But, golf is boring and we love eventing, so we have to draw the line of acceptable risk somewhere. In this case, the frustrating thing is that 38 USEF Board members, most of whom are not eventers, got to draw that line for us.
Go eventing.
