Equestrian sports: high risk, little control

Many horses outweigh their riders by over a thousand pounds; one quick move can cause problems.

Source: Janet Jones

Equestrian sports carry a high level of risk, something more riders, trainers and parents need to understand. To make matters worse, they have little control. Riders work with prey animals that are skittish, agile, super-fast and enormous. The average horse weighs 1,200 pounds, more than a ten-foot concert grand piano. Even well-trained horses can and do become hysterical in an instant, for reasons most people would never notice.

The chance of ending up in a hospital is greater for riders than for motorcyclists, skiers or football players. On average, motorcyclists are seriously injured once every 7,000 driving hours. The average number of serious injuries among riders is once every 350 hours. In other words: riding a horse is twenty times more dangerous than riding a motorcycle. And the number one cause of sports related traumatic brain injury? You guessed it: horse riding.

One of the reasons for the high injury and death rates when working with horses is a lack of control, something we don’t often consider when evaluating risks. For example, if you jump off a cliff attached to a bungee cord, you have tremendous control. You can see other people of different heights and weights jumping from the same location on a rope of the same length, in the same weather and with the same instructions. You can check all the carabiners, look for fraying ropes and time your jump to your preference.

These observations allow you to predict your own trajectory in advance, evaluate the safety of the equipment, address any quirks of location or weather in advance, and take a deep breath before throwing yourself into the air. While you wait for your turn, you can even Google the stats on your phone and discover that only 1 in 500,000 people die while bungee jumping. In equestrian sports, 50 out of every 500,000 die.

The problem – and the intense pleasure – with horses is that the ‘equipment’ has a mind of its own. All animals are unpredictable, but prey species are especially so. And 2,000 pounds of skittish, unpredictable muscle is reason for a break. People worry about falling off, but that should be the least of their worries. Excellent lifelong riders can be bumped or thrown with the force of a rocket flung into the mud. Horses sometimes panic and run away, running blindly at 60 kilometers per hour through buildings and forests full of obstacles above their heads, but not above yours. Every rider’s nightmare is having their foot caught in the stirrup and dragged as four hooves slam into our torso.

The chance of injury or death to the rider is much greater from the ground, where we can be caught, trampled, pinched, bitten, kicked, hit with a forelimb, crushed or knocked down by an animal whose brain is incapable of dealing with the consequences to assess. or feel regret. She’s not hurting you on purpose; she’s big and scared, and your body just happens to be in the way.

These events happen immediately, without warning and without the ability to control. We cannot see other people doing exactly the same thing to the same horse as we intend to do, because horses detect the slightest difference in behavior between one person and another. They can smell cortisol and adrenaline in our sweat and know if we are afraid. If so, the horse’s spirit tells her that she should be afraid too. Once both parties are afraid, the accidents become worse.

In any high-risk, low-control activity, control is critical. We can wear helmets and air vests, check our tack for safety, select well-trained horses and ride on soft sand. But it takes years of instruction and practice to stay away from horses – and even the most skilled and careful among us still get hurt. Too many people inside and outside the equine industry simply do not understand the need for horse safety. They put themselves, their horses and the rest of us in greater danger by trivializing the basic rules.

One of the reasons people don’t take the necessary precautions around horses is that we view animals as similar to us. A giant rogue wave in the ocean is not like us; Mount Everest above base camp doesn’t smell like a comfortable human living room; Bungee jumping from the highest bridge in the world feels strange. But horse riding? Well, a horse has a face and a body, just like us. He has eyes and ears, similar to ours. He has a voice and horse friends, he is playful and warm, he walks and runs, works and rests, eats and sleeps just like us. He has a mind – and too many people assume it resembles a human mind. So there is a psychological force that makes us trust unknown horses more than we should, especially if we don’t know much about handling them. Keeping that psychological force at bay can be important for your health.