Equestrian: Tight rein on risks despite veteran's fall, say NZ greats

Andrew Nicholson is recovering from surgery after falling in Britain. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Veteran rider Andrew Nicholson's neck injury shocked the equestrian community but New Zealand's two Olympic eventing gold medallists say the sport has never been safer.

Yesterday Nicholson walked unaided for the first time since undergoing surgery after falling from his mount Cillnabradden Evo at the Festival of British Eventing last weekend.

The 54-year-old fell after the last fence on the cross-country when in the lead.

"He is looking forward to returning home to continue his recovery and would like to thank everyone for their messages of support and goodwill, which have been much appreciated," Nicholson's family said in a statement.

Sir Mark Todd and Blyth Tait say the incident is unfortunate but course set-ups have improved since their 1980s and 1990s heyday.

"Obviously when you're pushing hard to win, it increases the risk," Todd said from Aachen in Germany, where he helped the New Zealand team get second behind the hosts in the three-star Nations Cup.

"Andrew would have known that, and if you're trying to win, you take chances.

"The sport is in a relatively good position on safety. In the last few years, they've done a lot but you will always get horses that fall. It's certainly not the fence or the sport's fault.

"I don't like falling off these days. It hurts a bit more [at age 59], but I was in a similar situation at the 2012 Olympics, pushing it on the last fence with a relatively tired horse and we got away with it. The horse stood up and we finished.

"I've had loads of falls. The worst was at Badminton when the horse tripped, fell and rolled over the top of me coming down a bank. Luckily, I got up and walked away."

Tait said the sport was stacked with preventative safety measures.

"The way courses are profiled and fences are constructed today is a far cry from the give-it-a-go-and-learn-from-the-experience attitude when I started. We even wear back protectors.

"Andrew's incident sounded pretty out of the ordinary. That fence [at Gatcombe Park] has been there for years and hasn't caused many injuries, but I imagine he was his usual competitive self and it just didn't work out.

"Having said that, Andrew's notorious for his stickability and rides many horses over many fences every weekend. I don't recall him having many significant injuries in the past."

Tait said most riders accepted injury was part of the job.

"Falling off a big animal like a horse is a statistic that's hard to beat. It always seems to happen quite slowly. You think, 'uh-oh, this is a mistake and it's going to hurt'. It's slower in your mind than it looks to others, but your instinct and reactions are important. I've mangled my shoulder, broken my femur twice and my face once ... that's about it."

The statistics of FEI, the world governing body, generally back up Todd and Tait's observations.

Incidents of falls and injuries have tracked down at the sport's upper levels across the past decade.

However, there were a couple of blips last year with an increase from 35 (10.48 per cent) in 2013 to 62 (15.58 per cent) of falls at four-star level.

Three-star level, the bracket of Nicholson's accident, made up 193 (6.72 per cent) of total falls in 2013 compared with 213 (7.20 per cent) last year.

From 2005-14, documented evidence shows that, across all levels of the sport, there is one fall with serious injury every 506 starters or 15,687 fences, and one fatal fall every 16,980 starters.