“I knew her to be a very capable, thorough, ambitious, accomplished rider who did it all well. Not someone to worry about,” said two-time badminton champion William Fox-Pitt, who announced his retirement earlier this month after 40 years of competitive racing. [being a risk]”…If you want to learn, it’s good to watch her. She was very organized in her riding.”
Since the deaths of five jockeys at British eventing in 1999, the sport has made great strides in safety and horse welfare: body protectors are now compulsory and previously “sturdy” fences are now held up by flimsy pins and will collapse if subjected to a hard impact.
Mr Fox-Pitt, who spent two weeks in a coma after a fall in France in 2015, added: “The fence she fell from has been there for five years and she has jumped over it hundreds of times almost without incident. It was a very fair thing for the horse and it was incredibly unlucky that it didn’t work out, but for whatever reason horses can sometimes misjudge even the simplest of fences.”
Last year, Zazie Gardot, then 21 and the European champion young jockey, suffered head injuries in a fall at another obstacle in Bicton and was taken by helicopter to hospital. She eventually returned to France, where she is still recovering.