United States Eventing Association

Casting Light on Rider Injuries

Pick up any equestrian magazine, review the Table of Contents and almost assuredly, you will find a topic related to injuries of horses....tendons, stifles, backs and so on. But how often do you find something written about rider injuries? Let’s look at this in more detail..

All of equestrian sports are based on the relationship between two beings: horses and riders. Often injuries curtail the development of this relationship and slow the training progress. Much attention has been placed on horse injuries and health issues rather than rider injuries especially injuries not based on accidents. It is hard to believe that riders, like any other athletes are not plagued with health challenges. Yet, no national or international association, medical research group, equestrian magazine seem to pay continuous attention to this topic. Rider health is definitely a missing and critical part of the relationships’ success. One of my students brought this to my attention, herself the recent victim of a spinal stress injury affecting her disks and potentially impacting her riding career from this point forward. Daphne is a smart gal, a learned academician, doctor of neurology and very much of a proactive person in taking charge of a problem and finding the optimal solution. Check out her own blog site (http://leimone.blogspot.com/) as she frustratingly sorts out her predicament. In our discussion of this recent development and how this will alter her spring competitive schedule, we both realized how little information exists in the monthly sources of our riding discipline. Daphne has declared this purpose to put her personal blog into perspective: to bring attention to the topic of rider health challenges and to establish a conversation among all involved in equestrian sports. Furthermore, it will be interesting to survey how widespread rider injuries that are (accident based or not), and how these injuries affect training –physically and psychologically. Her blog is especially interested in discussing the recovery process and the psychology of recovery.

So this would be a call to anyone who has faced the problem of a rider injury—what it was, how you coped, and how it has influenced your riding to date. The emphasize is non-trauma rider injury. Everybody has fallen off and gotten a bloody nose, complained and recovered but the repetitive sub-trauma activity that creates long term implications is something nobody really talks about. Perhaps to be thought of it as the 'carpal tunnel syndrome' - rider's version. Share on the USEA site, visit Daphne’s site if you wish but help us get this topic out of the shadows. -Gretchen Butts