riding deaths - Shana and Mia Eriksson
JC Dill
11/4 Mia Eriksson died when her horse Koryography fell at fence 19 on
XC while they were competing at a ** event. Her sister Shana died in
2004 when her horse spooked, slipped, and fell on her while out on a
trail ride out from the riding stables at CSU Fresno.
My housemate (whose sister died in a horse riding accident when he was
11 and she was 9) was really spooked when I told him that these
sisters died in unrelated horse riding accidents. He feels that there
must be more to the story (e.g. parents that pushed them to compete,
or that didn't give them appropriate safety precautions). I'm
inclined to just chalk it up to a very unlikely coincidence, but he
did get me to thinking. I found the story about how Shana died to see
if there's anything from that story that might shed light on the
topic. See the quotes from Shana's mom in the article below.
Here's the thread from 2004 where we discussed Shana's fall on rec.eq:
<http://groups.google.com/group/rec.equestrian/browse_frm/thread/11ac746ffc81ae31/>
The article linked in that discussion is no longer online. I found a
copy of a longer version in the Google Cache:
I'm going to post the contents of the article here, in case the cached
copy disappears too.
<quote>
Death of Fresno equestrian raises gender equity questions
Sunday, March 7, 2004
By MARTHA MENDOZA
AP National Writer
FRESNO -- On a sunny afternoon last fall, three college freshmen
saddled their horses and headed out for a ride. Shana Virginia
Eriksson was in front, her pony tail bouncing beneath her black
helmet.
Shana, 18, had always loved horses, and now she was a member of the
equestrian team at California State University at Fresno, with Olympic
ambitions.
The girls left the barn area and headed across a road, because their
usual arena was being dragged. Passing a field, they aroused the
curiosity of a herd of cows, which surged toward them. Suddenly, the
horses panicked.
As the other horses bolted, Shana pulled hers into a tight spin. In
the next instant, the 1,200-pound animal fell on her. She died three
days later.
That might have been the end of the tragic story. An athletic,
motivated young woman died doing what she loved best.
But questions that followed make this story more complicated: Did
pressure to ensure gender equity for athletes under federal Title IX
requirements play a part in the accident? Did warnings go unheard, or
unheeded? Was safety compromised?
An Associated Press review of hundreds of pages of university
documents, obtained through the California Public Records Act, and
interviews with current and former university staffers, found that:
-- The equestrian team's head coach had quit shortly before Shana's
fall citing safety concerns about the size of the team and limited
facilities; university officials deny she made her concerns clear to
them.
-- The equestrian team's numbers, highest in the nation with about 100
riders and 70 horses, were listed on annual Title IX compliance
reports, and the former coach says the university felt pressure to
keep a long roster to balance the numbers of athletes in men's sports.
-- University policy allows students who board their own horses at the
campus barn to ride them in situations that some horse-program
managers consider dangerous. Currently, almost all boarders are team
members.
Fresno State officials say Shana made a mistake, and that it was her
own decision to ride her horse, a sometimes skittish mare, into an
area where hazards were known. They say the trail ride that day was
not associated with equestrian team activity.
Although there were no coaches hired at the time of the accident,
officials say the equestrian team was adequately supervised by
graduate students and a barn manager.
More than 285 U.S. colleges, with 5,000 riders, compete in equestrian
events. Once a club sport, it gained NCAA varsity status in the late
1990s. Today there are 14 teams in NCAA Division I, the highest level
of competition.
Fresno State's equestrian club went varsity in 1996, partly to help
the school meet Title IX requirements following a lawsuit. A perennial
national contender, it finished sixth in the 2003 Varsity
Championships, considered the year's biggest competition.
But soon afterward, the coach, Megan McGee, quit her job, leaving the
team two weeks before Shana's death.
"I felt like Chicken Little," McGee said in an interview. "For a long,
long time I was telling them this is a house of cards. You can't
expect this to go on without problems arising. This many kids and this
many horses is not feasible. Finally I had to leave."
------
Approved in 1972, Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex by
any school that receives federal money. Schools show compliance many
ways: by ensuring that numbers of athletes match their gender ratios
in the student population, by increasing opportunities for female
athletes, and by fully accommodating women's interests.
In recent years, college athletic departments have been adding large
equestrian, field hockey and rowing teams, whose numbers of female
athletes balance their football squads and other male teams.
"A lot of schools are adding girls' teams with lots of bodies in them
... just for the numbers because Title IX has turned into a numbers
game," said Sheldon Steinbach, general counsel for the American
Council on Education, a group representing 1,800 universities. "The
question is, whether they have, in this pell-mell race to add teams,
allowed safety and supervision to slip."
Ann Baer, Oklahoma State University's associate athletics director,
agrees Title IX has become "about numbers. .... Equestrian is a sport
where you can get a lot of people involved."
By the time Fresno State's McGee quit as coach, she said, she felt
"pressured to keep building the team, but there wasn't the budget or
NCAA allowances to add enough coaches and other support. It grew out
of the seams, and I couldn't go on like that."
The Fresno State equestrian team budget this year is $540,176, barely
up from $539,287 in 2002-2003. McGee said she asked for more barns and
rings and sought to increase the ratio of coaches to athletes -- by
reducing the roster of riders, pushing the NCAA to allow more than
three coaches, or setting up an informal system of coaching with
graduate assistants and older students.
McGee said she offered to stay until a new coach could be found, but
Athletic Director Scott Johnson said he never heard about that offer
or her concerns about safety, which she says she expressed in letters
to university officials before she quit and in a newspaper interview
afterward.
The university, in a statement, said safety issues were addressed when
presented, including the placement of "Horse Crossing" signs McGee
requested at an intersection. But McGee declined an invitation to
discuss safety issues after her resignation, the statement said.
Shana chose Fresno State, her mother said, because it was a few hours
from her home in Tahoe City and because she thought its successful
Division I team could help take her where she wanted to go -- the 2008
Olympics.
But the equestrian season started last fall with no coaches, after
McGee and both of her assistant coaches left. Team members started to
practice with some guidance from graduate assistants who were assigned
to temporarily oversee the team, under an administrator's supervision.
"Official pre-season practice" began with the start of the semester,
said a team notice posted at the barn. "You may ride before the new
coaches are hired but you cannot receive coaching instruction from any
of the current Equestrian staff. However, you may receive instruction
from the current staff related to supervisory and safety concerns."
------
Shana was in the lead as she and her two friends headed out of the
equestrian area.
"We were riding our own horses and we just went out for a ride," Sarah
Farley, one of the other riders, said in a phone interview.
At the time, university officials say, an assistant athletic director
technically in charge of the team was not present.
Dana Harris, who at the time was the barn manager and is now an
assistant coach, told investigators she saw Shana and was "perplexed
that Shana had not mentioned to her that she was taking her horse out
on the trail," according to a report prepared for the university.
Harris assumed Shana would know better, she said, because "using
common sense on the riders' part," they should have known not to take
a young, skittish horse on a trail ride where none of them had been
before.
Harris said that there was no one in charge at the barn when Shana and
her friends took the horses out, but that there doesn't need to be,
and that riders with their own horses -- whether they're on the team
or not -- can "come and go as they please."
"It's ride-at-your-own-risk," Harris said.
But former coach McGee said that for the reasons Harris mentioned,
Shana would not have been allowed to ride under McGee's watch. Team
members agree.
"Last year we weren't allowed to go anywhere without permission and
orientation, and if we did we had to go on a horse that the coach
approved and with someone who had been there before," said sophomore
team member Rebecca Evans.
Ridigity of rules varies among programs. Skidmore College in Saratoga
Springs, N.Y., for example, requires all riding to be done in indoor
and outdoor rings unless permission has been granted to ride
elsewhere.
When the riders reached the busy street, Shana held out her hand to
stop traffic. After crossing, the equestrians approached the cattle.
"For some reason, cows began to charge at us," Farley told police.
"Our horses got spooked and started to spin around. My horse took off
running and I couldn't stop it so I jumped off."
Kasey MacFarlane's horse was running, too.
"I turned around and saw (Shana's) horse's legs go out from underneath
it. The horse fell right on top of her. I ran over and she wasn't
moving," MacFarlane told police.
Shana's funeral overflowed with friends and family, and a video
montage of her life -- clowning with fellow high school cheerleaders,
skiing in the Sierras, winning ribbons on horseback -- brought smiles
through the tears.
"Is there anything we can do?" asked Fresno State President John
Welty, approaching the Erikssons, holding out a hand.
"I'd like some information," answered Shana's mother, Karan Eriksson.
------
"The university represented itself to me as a high-end, national show
program for my daughter and my horse," says Karan Eriksson, tucking
her hands into the pockets of one of Shana's old riding jackets, a hug
from the past. "For this to happen, mistakes were made."
Former coach McGee agrees.
"This never should have happened," she said. "Those kids should never
been out in that area, on those horses, at 5 in the afternoon."
Shana was the second NCAA female athlete to die doing her sport, said
Dr. Fred Mueller, director of the National Center for Catastrophic
Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina. The first
was a skier, who died in 1998. At least 18 male college athletes have
died doing their sports during the past 20 years.
"I think most schools who are adding sports are adding them with big
budgets and plenty of coaches," said Mueller. "I would hope that they
would have adequate safety and supervision."
A recent NCAA study showing that women's numbers increased to 44
percent of student-athletes in Division I also revealed that financial
support for women's athletics has not kept up.
Dollar-for-dollar equality in per-athlete spending is not required;
often, schools must simply show spending is adequate for each team's
members. Revenues earned by various sports are not part of the
equation.
NCAA senior vice president Judy Sweet said, "At this point we have no
reason to believe there are safety issues that might be related to
this participation increase."
And yet injuries to female athletes are increasing, said Linda Jean
Carpenter, a professor emerita in physical education at Brooklyn
College. Numerous studies have confirmed that noncontact knee injuries
occur two to eight times more often in female athletes than in men;
whether that's because of physical differences or training is
undetermined, she said.
Carpenter added: "Access to training facilities and athletic training
has increased markedly, but it hasn't kept up with the numbers of
women participating."
------
In 1992, the California National Organization For Women sued the
California State University system, alleging discrimination by Fresno
State against women in athletics programs. At the time, women
constituted 54 percent of the student body and 27 percent of the
athletes.
The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights found Fresno
State out of compliance with Title IX in 11 of 13 areas. The
university was ordered to implement a 7-year, $7 million corrective
plan. As part of it, the school added its equestrian team.
In 2001, the civil rights office declared Fresno State in compliance
with Title IX.
University administrator Diane Milutinovich disagrees. There is still
a disproportionate number of male athletes, women have less practice
time, use lesser facilities and play for coaches who are generally
paid less, she said.
After 21 years as an athletic administrator at Fresno State, including
12 as associate athletics director, Milutinovich was reassigned in
2002, against her wishes, to direct the student union. The school says
her job change was due to budget cuts. She says officials didn't like
her repeated questions about gender equity.
But Fresno State's Title IX compliance officer, Desiree Reed-Francois,
says the school meets the federal requirements: Although female
athletes are underrepresented as a proportion of the student body, she
said, the school meets the Title IX requirement of having a strong
history and continuing practice of program expansion for female
athletes.
------
On a winter afternoon three months after Shana's death, a member of
the team with a long blonde braid headed out of the equestrian area on
her horse and trotted onto a dirt path alongside a road busy with
traffic.
"Now where's she going?" said new equestrian coach Chuck Smallwood.
"See, they can do this, but it's very scary to me!"
Smallwood and Art Parnham, chairman of the Department of Animal
Sciences and Agricultural Education, say university policy allows
students who board their own horses on campus to ride them where they
want, when they want. A safety review of this policy is being
conducted for the university.
Following the resignation of McGee, Karan Eriksson says she was
assured by administrators that the university would supervise Shana
when she rode and that written and oral instructions she says she left
with Harris about the care and limits of the horse would be followed.
Those instructions prohibited trail riding, she says. Harris says no
directions were left with her, and that she was not responsible for
the horse.
Fresno State maintains that Shana was acting as a boarder not as an
equestrian team member when she took the horse out on the day of the
accident.
"This lady went on a trail ride on her own horse," said Smallwood.
The girls' activity was "a voluntary workout," said Johnson, who as
athletic director is dealing with problems in other sports, too.
Last September, Fresno State was placed on NCAA probation for four
years for violations involving academic fraud, recruiting and
eligibility -- most in the men's basketball program, but also in men's
soccer and women's basketball.
The NCAA Infractions Committee also found a lack of institutional
control.
Karan Eriksson echoed that phrase as she spoke of university
officials' actions in Shana's case.
"They've tried to put together a plausible story to explain what
happened, but what I see is a total lack of institutional control,"
she said, "and now my daughter has died."
</quote>
--
"The nice thing about a mare is you get to ride a lot
of different horses without having to own that many."
~ Eileen Morgan of The Mare's Nest, PA
Dana Compton
On Nov 7, 1:15 pm, JC Dill <jcd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As noted in an earlier post, at Galway Downs in Temecula on Saturday
> 11/4 Mia Eriksson died when her horse Koryography fell at fence 19 on
> XC while they were competing at a ** event. Her sister Shana died in
> 2004 when her horse spooked, slipped, and fell on her while out on a
> trail ride out from the riding stables at CSU Fresno.
>
>
> <http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:5Sw1eFIMLe0J:www.napanews.com/temp...>
I see two different things that happen with riders. One they have no
clue, they are new to horses and have no idea how much danger they are
putting themselves in. Two is the riders who are good, damn good, and
they think they can ride and handle anything. Youth seems to push this
idea even further. They don't have the experience to know that they are
not invincable it's a young person thing not just a riding situation.
With coachs who have deadlines for these young riders and the horses I
do think they get pushed, and some get pushed way past the point of
safe. If the horse had been eliminated for refusing and the rider
continued to force the horse forward over fences then that is rider
error in my book, and maybe coaching error.
I can't imagine having two children killed like that. I don't know how
one would recover.
Dana
Hunter
>But questions that followed make this story more complicated: Did
>pressure to ensure gender equity for athletes under federal Title IX
>requirements play a part in the accident? Did warnings go unheard, or
>unheeded? Was safety compromised?
The mind boggles. Shit happens. The very act of getting on a horse is
fraught with danger.
As a teenager I rode in all sorts of crazy places. I rode down
highways at night. I rode across a narrow dam and back on a dare.
I galloped at midnight, through the woods during a full moon.
Most of us are lucky and survive our teens, some of us don't.
I don't see that she did anything particularly dangerous. She was a
top rider, she was on a broke horse.
Who among us hasn't had a horse spin, or spook, or do something
dangerous to us, no matter how broke it is.
Shit happens and it happened to her that day.
Hunter
--
http://members.aol.com/hhamp5246/summer2006.htm
Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well-preserved body,
but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "...holy shit...what a ride!"
Jim Casey
> ...I'm inclined to just chalk it up to a very unlikely coincidence, ...
I'm inclined to agree. Horseback riding among the more dangerous leisure
activities, and if everyone in the family rides (which is often the case
for innocent reasons), that family is more likely to have multiple accidents.
In the case you quoted, the unfortunate young woman ventured beyond her
abilities.
- Jim
jan...@erols.com
on public property." very very unfortunate, but title 9 or anything
else just really had nothing to do with it. this is a potentially
dangerous sport, and she reacted badly to an unexpected situation.
sad, but no one's fault.
as for mia, a couple event ppl i know are kind of boggled that she
continued riding after she'd been excused or gated or whatever it was.
i don't know about any of this stuff--was she unaware she'd been gated?
or did she ask to finish the course for schooling purposes?
--j_a
JC Dill
>as for mia, a couple event ppl i know are kind of boggled that she
>continued riding after she'd been excused or gated or whatever it was.
>i don't know about any of this stuff--was she unaware she'd been gated?
> or did she ask to finish the course for schooling purposes?
How this usually happens is the rider didn't know she was eliminated
(e.g. the rider was marked for 2 "refusals" at a single obstacle for
what the rider thought was a single stop). The jump judges at
subsequent obstacles are supposed to try to stop the rider. Since
jump judges are volunteers and have varying experience with all the
responsibilities of being an XC jump judge they sometimes don't know
HOW to safely and effectively stop a rider. What they need to do is
get up and stand in front of the jump, waving their arms and yelling
at the oncoming rider to stop. (Imagine how you would do it if there
was a fallen rider on the landing side of the jump and you HAVE to
stop the oncoming horse from jumping.)
Instead, what they usually do is call out from their position by the
side of the jump. Because of how focused the rider is and how fast
they are going (~550 meters per second, a FAST gallop), calls from the
side of the jump just aren't heard by the rider. I've seen eliminated
riders go another 5-10 jumps down the course before a jump judge is
effective at getting the rider stopped because the prior (ineffective)
jump judges just relied on "calling out", and the effective jump judge
got up and blocked the rider's path.
Sometimes the rider hears but unless physically blocked will proceed
anyway. The rider might feel that one of the refusals wasn't really a
refusal and plan to challenge the jump judge's ruling - obviously such
a challenge can only be effective if the rider finishes the course.
Or the rider might want to finish the course to ride/school the
subsequent jumps. I haven't seen this happen on an upper level ride -
usually this sort of thing happens at a lower level where the riders
don't have much experience and/or don't have much opportunity to
ride/school XC outside of a competition. For instance, a rider at
Novice that gets eliminated at a ditch (and it might have been a
single "stop" that got marked as 3 refusals) might attempt to continue
on to ride/school the water jump. At schooling shows this is often
allowed, but at recognized shows it is prohibited.
jc
Brian Whatcott
> ...what they usually do is call out from their position by the
>side of the jump. Because of how focused the rider is and how fast
>they are going (~550 meters per second, a FAST gallop), calls from the
>side of the jump just aren't heard by the rider.
...
>jc
Nice summary. Faster than a speeding bullet?
Perhaps not quite that fast...
Brian Whatcott Altus OK
am...@equestriantraining.com
I like to do low level eventing and I recently had a horse fall on me.
It happens so fast, and I was in the arena. The horse just didn't get
his feet underneath him cantering in a curve. I thought maybe he was
stumbling, and then wham no stumble he just kept on going. landed on
my leg so I could roll free, then rolled up 1/2 on me. I was lucky.
But, often I wonder about the time when I will not be lucky.
things happen, it makes us think about ourselves, our mortality, or
fitness level, and fate.
I only have some bruised ribs and lungs.
How sad for the Mother of these people, children really.
Judie
am...@equestriantraining.com wrote:
> This header caught my attention for a few reasons.
> I like to do low level eventing and I recently had a horse fall on me.
>
> It happens so fast, and I was in the arena. The horse just didn't get
> his feet underneath him cantering in a curve. I thought maybe he was
> stumbling, and then wham no stumble he just kept on going. landed on
> my leg so I could roll free, then rolled up 1/2 on me. I was lucky.
> But, often I wonder about the time when I will not be lucky.
>
> things happen, it makes us think about ourselves, our mortality, or
> fitness level, and fate.
> I only have some bruised ribs and lungs.
>
> How sad for the Mother of these people, children really.
>
I am glad that you survived that with minor damage. I have been lucky
in that my horse stumbled in the arena and was on her way down, my boot
got a little scrape mark as it rubbed against the rail in the direction
she was tipping, somehow she scrambled her legs under her and righted
herself. If I would have gone down I would have been between her and
the railing as that was how she was falling. <shudder>
Judie
jan...@erols.com
--j_a
Lisa Cook
"JC Dill" <jcd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> On 7 Nov 2006 13:48:53 -0800, jan...@erols.com wrote:
>>as for mia, a couple event ppl i know are kind of boggled that she
>>continued riding after she'd been excused or gated or whatever it was.
>>i don't know about any of this stuff--was she unaware she'd been gated?
>> or did she ask to finish the course for schooling purposes?
> How this usually happens is the rider didn't know she was eliminated
> (e.g. the rider was marked for 2 "refusals" at a single obstacle for
> what the rider thought was a single stop). The jump judges at
> subsequent obstacles are supposed to try to stop the rider.
<snip additional details>
Another reason why the rider may of kept going after being eliminated, other
than what JC outlined, could be due to possible rider confusion between FEI
rules and USEF/USEA rules, which are different.
Under USEF/USEA rules, which govern the vast majority of events in this
country, riders are eliminated on the *5th* stop on cross country (with a
maximum of 2 stops allowed at any one particular obstacle).
Under FEI rules, which happened to be governing the ** star event this rider
was in, riders are eliminated on the *4th* stop on cross-country.
If the rider was not familiar with riding under FEI rules (I'm not sure how
many FEI level events she had done prior to this. She was only 17...), then
she simply might have been pressing on, riding under the rules she was more
accustomed to.
Lisa Cook
Brookline, NH
JC Dill
wrote:
>Another reason why the rider may of kept going after being eliminated, other
>than what JC outlined, could be due to possible rider confusion between FEI
>rules and USEF/USEA rules, which are different.
>
>Under USEF/USEA rules, which govern the vast majority of events in this
>country, riders are eliminated on the *5th* stop on cross country (with a
>maximum of 2 stops allowed at any one particular obstacle).
>
>Under FEI rules, which happened to be governing the ** star event this rider
>was in, riders are eliminated on the *4th* stop on cross-country.
>
>If the rider was not familiar with riding under FEI rules (I'm not sure how
>many FEI level events she had done prior to this. She was only 17...), then
>she simply might have been pressing on, riding under the rules she was more
>accustomed to.
Mia and Koryography competed in (at least) 2 other FEI level events at
Galway Downs.
In March 2006 they competed in a CIC *, placing 15th with a score of
68.3:
<http://www.eventingnews.com/results/results.php?news=galwaydowns033106>
<http://www.useventing.com/competitions.php?section=calendar&page=results&event=13129>
Photos here:
<http://mccoolphotos.com/2006_showproofs/galway_apr06/072/index.html>
They were also at this event last year, apparently also in a CIC *,
their photos are at:
<http://mccoolphotos.com/2005_showproofs/galway_nov/123/index.html>
I was shooting for McCool Photos at the 11/05 event. I didn't take
any photos of this rider (for McCool Photos) which means that she was
in the short format - the competition photos I took of the * and **
riders were during the Steeplechase section. After Steeplechase ended
I shot on my own time for the rest of the day, taking photos for my
portfolio. I have this shot of Mia and Koryography (taken from the
same location and almost at the same time as one of Amy's shots in the
link above):
<http://equinephotoart.exposuremanager.com/p/2005_/2005-11-05-ls1f6203-60040>