New eventing rules to reduce horse falls in America

The United States Eventing Association (USEA) and United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) have come up with a number of new rules for eventing in the US to try to limit horse falls.

These include the USEF providing frangible pins free of charge to events and further investigation into fences that break on impact.

Post mortems will be carried out on all horses who die at US events, standards to determine the fitness of both horses and riders will be developed and greater training of instructors will be carried out.

The plans were unveiled at a safety summit at Lexington in Kentucky on 7-8 June.

This news story was first published in Horse & Hound (26 June, ’08)

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