Should Protective Vests Be Required In Show Jumping?

Over the weekend, a client of Jet Show Stables in Florida got bucked off their horse.

The rider, who is also a close friend of Jimmy and Danielle Torano who have long run the farm, suffered serious injuries. She broke her collar bone, shoulder blade and four vertebrae. She suffered a collapsed lung and broken hip. All from just being bucked off.

“It hit me like a ton of bricks,” said Danielle, an amateur-owner hunter/jumper rider. “It’s a risk we take every time we get on, but I think it would be a totally different story if she had a vest on. I really do.”

Danielle is advocating for more hunter and jumper riders in the U.S. to wear protective vests while riding and showing. She thinks the vests – more commonly used by eveners on cross-country – should even be mandatory.

“If it can help protect us even a little bit, then why aren’t we doing this?” she said.

Protective riding vests are a rarity among grand prix show jumping riders, but they’ve popped up at national horse shows in recent years. Sandy Ferrell wore a protective vest over her show coat in the 3’9″ green hunter championship at the 2017 Devon Horse Show. Grand prix show jumper Andrew Welles has shown while wearing an air vest.

“We won’t even jump a pole on the ground without them on now, even at home,” said Alexandra Welles, an amateur show jumper and Andrew’s wife.

Air vests, made by companies like Hit-Air, Point Two, among others, are designed to “deploy”, or fill with air, when a rider is ejected from the saddle to soften the blow of impact with the ground.

“We ride these enormous animals over huge jumps with no protection other than the hat on our heads,” Danielle explained. “It’s ridiculous and it’s dangerous.”

Safety vests have been used in equestrian sport for 35 years, but the research behind their effectiveness is still slim. For the newer air vests, it’s even thinner. There just isn’t a wide body of conclusive data yet.

But even knowing that, Danielle still thinks something is better than nothing.

“Even if there’s a 10 percent chance wearing it will help in some way, why wouldn’t we do it?”

Danielle posted on her personal Facebook page about the need to advocate for vest use among hunter and jumper riders after her client’s fall. While she said she received mostly support from her friends in the horse industry, there were a few naysayers.

“One person said, ‘oh I’d never wear that’,” Danielle described. “My husband and I have been in the business a long time. We remember when there was pushback on helmets. Change can be hard, but we’ve been on the other side of it, of not wanting change, and see how important change for safety really is.”

Danielle said her husband, grand prix show jumper and trainer Jimmy Torano, is also a big believer in the tradition of the sport. She said the formality of “tradition” is the likely the largest barrier to getting riders to invest in wearing vests.

“My husband is one of the biggest proponents of tradition and the look of it,” Danielle confessed. “He’s the type who wants me to still wear my jacket when when the show waives them. I think it’s silly. But I can see people not wanting to wear vests because of the way it looks.”

But even Jimmy, she says, is turning the corner.

“It has to slap you in the face. I really believe that,” Danielle described.

At Jet Show Stables, clients will be asked to wear the vests going forward, Danielle said. Same with their 10-year-old son, who rides in the pony hunters.

“He’s afraid he’s going to look silly, and that no one else is going to be wearing one,” she said. But he’s still wearing it.

Danielle said she plans to make the case for making vests mandatory with organizations like USEF and USHJA. She isn’t the only one, Diana Babington, a rider and the wife of Irish show jumper Kevin Babington who was paralyzed in a fall at the Hampton Classic last year, is also advocating for the change.

“There is this part of the sport where everyone feels they must look a certain way,” Danielle said. “But it’s time to evolve. The more people get behind it, the more it will become like wearing a helmet – you won’t think twice about it.”