Equestrians’ Deaths Spread Unease in Sport

A failed jump by one of the world’s finest riders and a spate of deaths have unnerved the equestrian community.

Darren Chiacchia, 43, who helped the United States Olympic team win a bronze medal at the Athens Games and was considered a favorite for this year’s team, was training a horse on an intermediate course in Tallahassee, Fla., last month when the stallion crashed over a fence, crushing — and nearly killing — its celebrated rider.

Mr. Chiacchia spent a week in a coma and is now recovering at a rehabilitation facility near his home in Buffalo. Meanwhile, the sport he devoted his life to faces an identity crisis. Considered alongside the deaths of 12 riders worldwide over the past year and a half, his crash has reignited a fierce debate over whether the risks involved with the equestrian discipline known as eventing — an arduous three-phase competition — have become too great.

Top competitors and coaches argue that the sport’s growing popularity has attracted inexperienced riders who take too many risks, and amateur riders complain that courses are being designed beyond their skill level in order to challenge elite riders. There is also frustration that the governing bodies for eventing have not mandated the safety improvements they identified after another cluster of deaths nine years ago.

A target of criticism is the former husband of England’s Princess Anne, Mark Phillips, who is coach of the United States Olympic eventing team and designs many competition courses, including the one at the Red Hills Horse Trials, where Mr. Chiacchia’s fall occurred.

The riders who died ranged in age from 17 to 51. Some, like Sherelle Duke, 28, of Ireland, were considered to be top riders. Others, like 17-year-old Mia Eriksson of Tahoe City, Calif., were just starting out. Three riders died during competitions in the United States.

In a letter to members, Kevin Baumgardner, the president of the United States Eventing Association, wrote: “The overall trends, particularly over the last three years, are unmistakable and, in my view, totally unacceptable. I know that my concern that the sport has gotten off track is shared by many of our members, amateurs and professionals alike.” Mr. Baumgardner’s letter generated 500 phone calls and e-mail responses.

An Olympic sport since 1912, eventing originated as a way to test the ability and endurance of military horses. It is often called a horse triathlon because participants compete in three events over one-, two- or three-day competitions: the delicate footwork of dressage, the beauty and control of show jumping, and the endurance and daring of cross-country racing. The winding courses of up to two and a half miles are designed to mimic the natural obstacles of rural landscapes.

“It’s considered by many to be the ultimate test of horse and rider,” Mr. Baumgardner said.

The cross-country phase is the most dangerous, as horse and rider are required to clear 20 to 40 jumps in an established time period. Penalties are assessed if the horse balks at a jump, if the horse or rider falls, or if their time is too slow. Riders look for courage and well-roundedness in eventing horses, which can cost anywhere from $25,000 to $1 million each.

All 12 of the recent deaths occurred during the cross-country phase as riders attempted to clear obstacles, including some that were startlingly simple. Most of the deaths resulted from what are called rotational falls, somersaulting flips similar to Mr. Chiacchia’s.

Beyond that, Mr. Phillips said, “There isn’t any common thread.”

As courses designed by Mr. Phillips and others create new challenges for elite competitors, amateur riders say that lower-level courses have also become more difficult in order to prepare aspiring riders for the next level.

“It’s not galloping cross-country over natural obstacles anymore,” said Ilana Gareen, an amateur rider and assistant professor of community health at Brown. “I liked the fact that you could go to eventing and just be a good rider, do well, and have fun.”

Mr. Chiacchia’s fall, said Anastasia Curwood, an amateur rider who teaches African-American history at Vanderbilt University, “was kind of a tipping point for a large number of people to get active and try to make some change.”
Commenters on equestrian online message boards have focused much of their venom on Mr. Phillips, calling for him to step down. Mr. Phillips posted a response on the eventing association’s Web site, accusing his critics of being in “a frenzied tailspin using the anonymity of cyberspace to cast a dark shadow over the future of the sport.”

Mr. Phillips holds much sway over who is selected for the Olympic team. According to event organizers, riders make a point of competing on courses he designs.

As an existing safety precaution, competitors are encouraged to review the courses in advance and communicate any concerns they have to “rider representatives,” who then inform event organizers. Mr. Phillips said he received no complaints on the Red Hills course, only compliments, and said he considered Mr. Chiacchia’s crash a fluke.

Top competitors, coaches and course designers argue that the sport’s death and injury toll is most likely related to an influx of new riders to the sport. Participation in eventing competitions in the United States has grown by 36 percent over the past decade; riders filled roughly 46,000 competition slots in 2007, according to the association.

“You have people who didn’t grow up fox hunting or going on wild rides the way we did,” said Mick Costello, an event rider who builds cross-country courses. “They haven’t been used to tumbling falls. They get a thrill out of going fast, and a lot of them aren’t ready.”

Mr. Costello and others acknowledge that the increasing skill of top riders has pushed them to create more complex courses. They have recently been designing “speed bumps” to slow the riders, to little avail. “These people are so good, they just take it in stride,” he said.

The current debate over safety comes nine years after another rash of deaths shook the eventing community. In 1999, five British riders died in a matter of months and calls flooded in to make cross-country courses safer.

In response, British organizers developed frangible pins that can be inserted into certain fences to allow the rail to drop when a horse hits it. Although the pins have been available since 2001 and have been shown to be effective in helping to prevent rotational falls, they are used in only 4 percent of obstacles in Britain, where they are mandatory on certain fences. They are even scarcer in the United States.

Some eventing organizers say the use of frangible pins is not widespread because they cannot be used on all fences and are perceived to be too expensive to install.

“I know that they’re quite expensive, and your average organizer finds the cost prohibitive,” said Katie Lindsay, the competition director for the eventing association’s 2008 national championships. “So they will avoid building the type of fence where you can use the frangibles on.” The pins cost about $70 per fence, according to Mr. Costello, who is the United States distributor for the pins.

British Eventing, the governing body of the sport in Britain, is working with an engineering company to develop new mechanisms that can be used in a wider variety of fences.

Scant data exists on how often accidents happen, and why. The Fédération Equestre International, the sport’s international governing body, has only recently begun to require member countries to collect the same data. Safety information on the U.S.E.A.’s Web site includes detailed injury data for 2005 and 2006, for example, but provides only fatality data for other years.

Mr. Chiacchia has been active in the safety debate. In December, he was named chairman of a task force created to address safety issues. The group is expected to propose changes later this month to the United States Equestrian Federation, the rule-making body for all equestrian sports. In January, the international federation held a convention in Copenhagen on safety in eventing.

Like many equestrian athletes, eventers say they accept a certain level of risk, given that their fate is linked to a 1,000-pound animal with a mind of its own. The chance of falling off a horse was less than a tenth of 1 percent for riders who competed in 2005 and 2006, according to the eventing association’s data.

Watching a prominent rider like Mr. Chiacchia fall shook many others, especially when they learned he was competing on an intermediate course because his 7-year-old horse, Baron Verdi, was not experienced. The horse was not hurt.

His friends in the eventing community are helping run his farm in Ocala, Fla. Mr. Chiacchia makes a living through teaching, training horses, corporate sponsorships and by riding breeders’ horses, which improves their value. Prize money is not as significant — the winner at Red Hills won about $6,000, plus the use of a Mercedes for a year.

Mr. Chiacchia sustained rib, lung and head injuries and has made slow progress. He can stand for short periods and hold brief conversations, said his brother, Daniel Chiacchia.

Although the family says it is encouraged by his progress — especially the return of his sense of humor, they say — it is unclear if he will make a complete recovery, let alone ride again. The family knows Mr. Chiacchia believes in improving the safety of the sport but considers his a “freak accident.”

Mr. Chiacchia does not remember the fall, and his brother said he still refuses to believe that it was true. “That’s almost insulting,” he said, “to tell my brother that he fell off a horse.”

Human Horse Trials Wallaby Hill Farm

Wallaby Hill Farm Human Horse Trials Fund Raiser to help Australian Equestrian Eventers attend Beijing Olympics. Event held without horses because of Equine Influenza outbreak in Australia in December 2007.




Click here to see the Original Horse Deals coverage of this fantastic event.

31 horses found dead on Rowan farm, OWNER WAS APPARENTLY TOO ILL TO CARE FOR THEM

The bodies of 31 horses were found on a Rowan County farm, and several other horses are very sick, the Rowan County sheriff said Tuesday.

Sheriff Jack Carter said some of the horses' bodies were decomposed. Eleven horses were found in the barn and 20 in the pasture at the horse farm off Ky. 32 east of Morehead, he said.
Carter said the dead horses were a "terrible sight to see. It's something you don't expect in this area, or any area."
Law authorities and agriculture officials were investigating.
No charges have been filed, but the owner of the horses told investigators that he has been critically ill and unable to care for the animals, Carter said.
The owner, Don Miller, could not be reached for comment.
Della Reynolds, a neighbor, said she did not notice anything unusual about the Miller farm before she heard of the investigation through news reports.
Reynolds said she had spoken with Miller's wife in the past and learned that Miller had a heart attack a year and a half ago.
"He had been in really bad shape," Reynolds said, recalling past conversations. "His wife told me that he didn't have the energy to do anything ... he wasn't capable of doing much, from what I understand."
Miller has raised horses and they have been taken care of in the past. She has seen truckloads of hay being taken to the farm, and her family had helped feed the horses at one time.
"I don't think it was intentional, because he worked with animals all of his life," she said.

Winter Active Max P Fescue linked to horse poisonings

PASTURE agronomist Ross Watson, Scone, says horse owners throughout Australia should not graze their horses on any pasture containing the Max P® Mediterranean Fescues, (also widely known as winter active fescues) following three horse deaths at Scone and Canowindra, and many cases of horse illness on five properties in Scone, Canowindra, Albury, Cootamundra and Kangarilla in South Australia.

Mr Watson, a consultant to horse studs throughout the Hunter Region, said that at present, Flecha Max P® was the variety associated with the majority of cases, possibly because its seed accounted for the majority of seed sales, and therefore sowings, over recent years. However, he said all Mediterranean /winter active fescues with Max P might also be implicated, which included “VNS” (Variety Non Specific) fescue seed lines and downgraded Max P fescue seed lines.
Mr Watson said that horse owners were advised to no longer sow Max P Mediterranean fescue or any pasture blend containing these specific fescue lines until the problem was clearly understood.
“Property owners who might have these fescue pastures primarily sown for cattle or sheep should not place their stock horses or children’s ponies on such pastures,” he said.
Mr Watson said there had been a total of 59 horses on five properties, grazing pastures that contained the Mediterranean fescues and 47 of these horses had been affected. Based on this, there was a high risk of horses becoming seriously ill or dying on these pastures.
“This is the first case of this problem ever being reported in the world,” he said.
“This problem is something the pasture and the horse industry did not need.”
The new Fescue Poisoning Syndrome, known as “Equine Fescue Oedema” (EFO), is very different to the widely recognised Fescue Toxicosis that occured in America, when horses graze high endophyte or “wild type” fescue pastures.
As soon as this problem was first reported in October 2007, a team of pasture and veterinary experts from Australia and New Zealand were put together by PGG Wrightsons , the marketers of Max P fescues in Australia, to investigate this problem. Extensive pasture sampling from all affected sites were collected and carefully prepared in Australia late last year, for detailed analysis by AgResearch NZ in January 2008. These complex analyses have taken some time and are continuing, but because this is a new and complex problem it is not going to be an easy task to pin point the compound and when, where and why this has occurred, Mr Watson said.
"Initially no one was sure whether it was in fact the fescue, certain veterinary drugs, contaminated feed supplements, a toxin associated with other grasses in the pastures or some rare fungi or bacteria which had attacked the fescue and had produced the toxin," he said.
But over the last month and with the recent Canowindra case, Mr Watson said the overwhelming field and veterinary evidence accumulated certainly pointed to the Max P Mediterranean fescue containing some unknown toxin. On this basis, he said this warranted a public awareness campaign.
While the answer to the problem might take many months to fully investigate, in the mean time, Mr Watson said horse owners everywhere needed to be aware.
"Until we know for sure, we think it is appropriate that people are aware of the problem, and hopefully we will have a definite answer on what has caused this problem in the near future," he said.
As a result, Mr Watson said that horse owners would have to reconsider their pasture options.
"As far as fescues, only Certified, Nil or Zero Endophyte Mediterranean fescue seed lines such as Flecha (Non Max P version) and Resolute (Non Max P version), Prosper and Fradyo winter active fescues can be considered safe for horses," he said.
"Interestingly, the Summer Active or Continental Max P fescue lines such as Quantum Max P, Advance Max P and Jessup Max P have been used for many years on horse studs in Australia with absolutely no problems.
"Max P fescues are pasture lines inoculated with a specially selected endophyte fungi. These fungi naturally live inside the grass plant in a symbiotic relationship. They produce chemical compounds which give the host pasture plant much better resistance to insects, heat stress and drought. Novel endophytes have been used successfully in pastures in NZ, Australia and the USA for more than 15 years in perennial ryegrass and fescue pasture lines. They have made a major difference to the productivity and persistence of ryegrass and fescue pastures. It will be a major loss to the pasture industry throughout the world if MaxP technology is jeopardised," Mr Watson said.
Dr Bourke, Principal Veterinary Scientist with NSW DPI, Orange, has been assisting the working group on Equine Fescue Oedema.
He said that some of the consistent clinical signs were that the horses becqme lethargic, depressed, loose their appetite and are inclined to lie down.
"Most develop mild to moderate swelling of the head and neck as a result of a build up of fluid below the skin which is called an oedema, and at the same time they develop oedematous thickening of the wall of the right dorsal colon," he said.
"This is visible on scan images of the abdomen. They go on to develop oedema of the chest and belly (ventral oedema), including accumulation of fluid within the abdominal cavity. Whereas the head and neck oedema quickly resolves, the ventral oedema can persist for several weeks. Protracted weight loss and associated anoestrous are risks for affected lactating mares. Secondary inflammatory changes such as peritonitis are possible in some animals. The prolapse of the rectum has also been observed."
Dr Bourke said that vets dealing with Equine Fescue Oedema needed to be aware that the outstanding and consistent finding is a drop in total blood plasma proteins with values as low as 27 but typically 35 to 45 g/L (normal range 52-79). This is due to an albumin decline, with albumin values recorded of about 8 to 12 g/L (normal range 19 -32). The PCV is elevated, eg 56 to 70 (normal 36-48). If the albumin drop is too severe the horse will die before plasma administration can restore it. During the recovery phase plasma proteins may not return to normal for several weeks. In some affected horses these biochemical and blood changes can develop quite suddenly and return to normal quite quickly once they are moved off the pasture.

Extensive pasture sampling and chemical testing to date has not conclusively identified the problem, but the overwhelming available evidence is pointing to an issue related to the chemical compounds produced by the Max P endophyte in winter active fescues.
This is a very lethal toxin with only small amount of the toxin needed to kill or make an adult horse very sick.
"We feel all horse owners need to be aware of this problem, so any further horse deaths or animal ill health can be avoided," Dr Bourke said.
"Cattle and sheep grazing these same pastures have shown no obvious effects to date. Many thousands of cattle and sheep have grazed these sort of pastures over the last five years and there has been no reported problems associated with this type of fescue. Cattle and sheep owners should report any similar symptoms or stock losses on fescue pastures."
The Max P fescues have been widely and successfully established throughout temperate areas of Australia, especially in NSW, Victoria and South Australia since 2005.
"The first reported case was in Scone in September 2007 and the most recent case was at Canowindra in March 2008. However, the vet and stud manager at a horse stud in Southern NSW noted horses affected by EFO, when grazing pastures which did contain fescue in 2006, but did not know what it was and did not report the case. So at the moment no one can be sure if and when this fescue is “safe” to horses. We do know that in many cases horses have grazed these paddocks for periods before the poisonings occurred, with no known effects, but suddenly we have had this problem. We are not sure now when the high risk period is," Dr Bourke said.
"The many affected horses in spring 2007 were brood mares in pasture paddocks with foals at foot, but geldings, stallions and young yearling horses have all been affected. Clinical cases first appear about three to seven days after horses start grazing a toxic pasture but with mixed pastures it may take some weeks, depending on pasture composition and horse selectivity. If they are immediately removed from the toxic pasture, then most affected animals will return to normal within another three to seven days, but some may require supportive therapy in the form of plasma administration, and some may die despite this treatment. Some affected horses may take up to 28 days to recover."
Mr Watson said the contacts below would appreciate hearing from any other horse owners who have experienced Equine Fescue Oedema problem or who are grazing Max P Mediterranean fescues with horses with no reported problems.
Horse owners who have sown pastures containing Mediterranean Max P fescue, should contact their local seed reseller, agronomic adviser or PGG Wrightsons in Melbourne on their Hotline 1800 619 910 to discuss their pasture options.