FEI Eventing Safety Committee Prioritizes Issues

The newly-created Federation Equestrian Internationale (FEI) Safety Sub-Committee met for the first time in London, England last week; David O’Connor (USA) is the chairman.

The objective of the inaugural meeting was to define the Committee’s mission as well as its agenda.

The role of the FEI Safety Sub-Committee is to:
- Identify all areas of concern;
- Investigate or trigger specific investigations;
- Manage all issues related to Eventing Safety by recommending rule updates and policy changes in the sport;
- Communicate on all findings

The Committee reviewed the following specifics:

1. PREVENTION:
- Ensuring that the strictest international safety requirements are applied to the national level;
- Development of diversified safety devices for Cross Country construction;
- Promoting research on riders helmets;
- Reviewing of trends in Course Designing;- Stopping horses on Cross Country course;
- Reviewing of number of refusals on Cross Country;
- Training of fence stewards;
- Introduction of a National Eventing expert to be the liaison between the NF and the FEI in relation to all safety issues;
- Review of FEI Officials education and qualification;
- Qualification of riders at national level before entering low level international events;
- Promotion of FEI Eventing safety database and reports on all the figures relating to Eventing international events.

2. ANALYSIS:
- Monitoring of statistics (i.e. specific combination of fences, analysis of riders or horses falling several times during a year, events with abnormal number of falls, etc.), and follow-up with FEI Officials and NFs;
- Inclusion of veterinary information on horses in a safety database;
- Review of serious accidents and procedures.

3. MANAGEMENT:
- Communication and follow-up of safety programme;
- Planning of safety educational seminars.

Comments, ideas and proposals are welcome and should be sent to the FEI Headquarters: Catrin Norinder FEI Eventing Director / Nathalie Desscan Eventing Department: n.desscan@horsesport.org

(Information posted is extracted from FEI report)