Balancing on a Pin’s Edge

I have done a lot of watching of FEI levels lately with visits to Nunney, Barbury, Gatcombe and Hartpury. Both Barbury and Gatcombe were designed by Mark Phillips, Nunney was designed by Adrian Ditcham and Hartpury by Eric Winter. I think we all appreciate the lengths that course designers have gone to balance the tricky conundrum of safety while retaining a fair challenge.

Not long ago, a long hold on the XC course struck utter dread into the hearts of eventing fans. Was it the horse, or the rider, who was hurt? Now, a long hold on course does not necessarily mean a bad fall at all, it might just be another frangible pin (or 2) that needs replacing.

What has made me think about course design lately were the delays  at Hartpury which saw horses running 90 minutes behind their allocated times by the end of the 2* competition. I felt having walked all three courses that the questions were fair and that there was nothing absurd that had not been seen before at the level. The difference between the 2* seen at Nunney, Barbury and Hartpury were the number of frangible pins employed at the courses. Hartpury had more frangible pin fences than I have seen before on one course. At one point, two fences had their frangible pins triggered on the course at different spots which instantly meant holds on course and riders were delayed. From what I can see from the results not a single rider who triggered a pin was allocated 21 penalties, which they would have received if the Ground Jury had deemed that the pin broke preventing a horse fall.

I think we all want to see Frangible pin technology being used on a course but from what I was watching riders were often not taking care at these fences. I watched a very experienced 4* rider at Hartpury at the open corners with a terrible line and approach, get away with it thanks to the pins being activated. Both Nunney and Barbury had open corners. Nunney’s open corner also saw several dreadful approaches (too forwards or not holding the line) which activated the pins with resultant rider or horse falls but nothing like as bad as they could have been without the pin being activated. What both Nunney and Hartpury had in common was a downhill approach to them, and though Hartpury had a second open corner it was not on a related distance, and because it was far enough away it did not require riders to hold a careful line. It could be ridden as two separate fences effectively with enough time to re-balance. This contrasts with Barbury where the corners required accuracy and controlled pace, because the second open corner was on an acute line which required accuracy and balance. I saw several run outs at the second part of the corners but not a single frangible pin was triggered while I watched. Realistically riders should be riding these corners the same as they require the same accuracy and balance, but the reality was that because of where they were placed and the questions which followed, they did not.

This brought me back to thinking about Gatcombe. I watched two days of horses go round Gatcombe and though I appreciate it was the creme de la creme of British Eventing, there were very few holds on course and problems were spread around the course evenly. The only fence which had a frangible pin activated was a big oxer in the Park Bowl which was triggered in the Intermediate Championship but the fence required bold riding thanks to the size of the fence and ditch underneath.

My next thought was that in the 2* at Hartpury the fence into water was a skinny log into water. I saw this fence triggered a few times and once it did prevent what I felt would have been a horse fall but frangible pins at water fences do make me think is this the right place for them to be employed? Experienced horses often seem to slither over a water fence and will often rap them with their hind fetlocks. Does this weaken the pin and cause it to fall more often than it would do if the same fence was employed elsewhere on the course?

What is clear is that there were massive delays at Hartpury with a serious amount of horses to run cross country and the feature event, the spectator-drawing 3*, not running until after 4pm, which is too late. I had to leave at 5.3opm and I saw a fraction of the horses I was hoping to see. This contrasts with last year where there were fewer delays and it made for a much more exciting day as a spectator.  I enjoy watching 1*, 2* and 3* cross country competition on one day as nowhere else do you get to see this in England. Which brings me back to the frangible pins. At Badminton, they only try to get through a maximum of 80 runners on the XC in a day. At Hartpury they had 228 this surely also has to have an impact on the way course design is thought about?

Is there a balance that needs to take place with the amount of frangible pins on a course? At one day events you see far fewer fences with them and its not until you get to FEI where the complexity and difficulty is raised that you see them in any quantity. Are riders respecting the fences which have them enough?

What is clear is that the teams who fit the pins are going as quickly as possible when repairing them and that they are a lot quicker at repairing pins now than they used to be, and that frangible pins are here to stay for very good reasons, but there has to be a balance between testing riders safely, without serious interruptions to the days events. Even as a die hard spectator I found the delays between pins breaking frustrating as there was a lot of sitting around and waiting. I imagine it was equally frustrating for riders who would have no idea about when to warm up and making sure they got the best out of their horse as well as being held on course.