Holy Crap Badminton

I think I’m glad I was busy the weekend of Badminton this year, and missed the live carnage, I mean coverage. But one doesn’t need to have witnessed it to know that something was amiss with Giuseppe Della Chiesa’s course. Here is a comparison of the event’s results this year with last year:

Given that last year’s course was criticized for being too soft, I’ll mention that in 2011 (the event was rained out in 2012) the completion rate was 56 out of 84 starters, or 66.7%, or almost double the completion rate this year.

Among the casualties of this year’s killer Badminton course was our sole Canadian entry, Rebecca Howard and Riddle Master. There is a thought-provoking reflection on the event on Eventing Nation today, in which Leslie Wylie considers how much frangible pins helped to save lives and limbs. The piece has a few grueling videos and photos, including one of Rebecca and Rupert having what would have been a truly devastating moment at the fence whose frangible pins broke when Rupert failed to clear the trailing rail with his entire hindquarters. No doubt Rebecca is one of the riders who is immensely grateful for those pins. But as usual, I’m going to go all glass-half-empty on you again.

Here is a list of the thoughts in my head regarding this year’s Badminton:

• interesting that the course was designed by Giuseppe, the former chair of the FEI Eventing Committee, and driving force behind all the safety and risk management initiatives, including the introduction of frangible pins
• I think it’s safe to conclude that last year’s course was too easy. It seems Giuseppe was either mandated or determined to get the course back up to snuff this year, but the pendulum clearly swung too far.  It is my opinion that if one year the course is a cake walk, an expectation is created for the next year, and a responsible course designer would make the course only incrementally more difficult in order not to cause the kind of annihilation that resulted this year. Maybe it would take three or four years to return Badminton to its former glory as the world’s toughest event, but that’s okay. Better than taking out more than half the field, right?
• are frangible pins a purely good thing without any drawbacks? If you looked at the photos and videos linked above, tell me you enjoy seeing horses struggling like that. Is the point of the frangible pins to make it safe for the fences to be so enormous that only on a perfect approach a horse can be assured of clearing it? I don’t think so.
• Leslie Wylie has presented an argument as follows:  frangible pins were broken at 12 fences on course at Badminton; therefore ’12 potentially rotational falls were prevented’ by their use. First of all, when horses hang their hind legs on fences, they don’t typically go ass-over-teakettle, so that takes out quite a few of those broken pins. Many of them broke because horses didn’t clear back rails. Frangible pins are supposed to save lives in exceptional circumstances. 12 incidents to me indicates either a mis-use of the pins so that the jumps can be super humongous, or as I’ve hinted already, a badly designed, dangerous course.
• I’m no bleeding heart. I don’t believe that bits are cruel, that we should never use whips or spurs, or that horses should never receive bute (unless we plan on serving them for dinner); and as an ex-eventer I still love the discipline that creates the fittest all around athlete and an incredible bond between horse and rider. But I’m giving this year’s Badminton and course designer Giuseppe Della Chiesa two thumbs way, way down.