Members of the North Shropshire Hunt have made two large donations to one of their local foodbanks in the build-up to Christmas.
Annie O’Donnell, wife of North Shropshire joint-master Nigel O’Donnell, and their daughter Poppy were keen to support Foodbank Plus, which operates under the Barnabus Community Projects banner in Shrewsbury. They have worked with members of the hunt to put together a range of items, from dried and tinned food to personal hygiene products, washing powder, baby products and cleaning products. Collections of items have been made at meets over the past few weeks.
Annie said: “The support from all members of the North Shropshire Hunt has been overwhelming and it is so lovely that we can help people in our own community. We hope that other groups might feel inspired to do the same.”
Foodbank Plus is run by Karen Williams and a team of more than 80 volunteers.
Karen said: “It’s not just people in towns and cities who need the services of food banks; many people in isolated rural communities are also in great need of support, not just at this time of year but all year round.”
A hunt spokesman said: “For Christmas alone Foodbank Plus has put together 168 parcels for people and families across Shropshire, ranging in size from something for one person to something for 10 people, so that anyone in need of some help can have a lunch and a brief respite from the day-to-day stress of making ends meet.”
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We asked our H&H hunting writers and columnists for their best memories of hunting over Christmas. Here are our favourites...
Frank Houghton Brown, former master and huntsman of the Tynedale and Middleton
The Middleton would always send out two packs on Boxing Day, and in the late 1990s I went to Malton market place with the doghounds while kennel-huntsman Anthony Nicholson took the bitches to Driffield town centre. The ground was hardly huntable, frosted and crisp, and we had a sequence of stops with the hounds after the meet, notably the old people’s home.
We eventually found a fox in Amotherby Ings, some rough ground that was part submerged in icy flood water. Hounds almost immediately crossed the river Rye in exactly the same place as they had in October when the river was low, but now it was brim full.
In my haste to keep up with hounds I pushed my horse in to the water at the same point where I had forded it in the autumn but was swept downstream, parted company with my mount and swam to the far bank. I was reunited with my horse 100 yards downstream and then was the only one in touch as hounds ran across the Sinnington and Derwent hunt countries.
We finished in the dusk in Brian Raines’ farm yard and as we waited for the hunt lorry, the white frost was growing out of my saturated red coat. Brian’s wife Rosemary ordered me in to the house, stripped me naked and pushed me in to a hot bath: a demeaning end to a memorable day.
Event rider and Beaufort field master Beanie Sturgis
On Christmas Eve last season our nine-year-old son Sid and I went for a day on a Wednesday, which we don’t normally hunt on. The field master kindly gave me a pink ticket to ride wide. The hounds hunted really, really well and we had one of those special, stroke-of-luck days when every turn and decision was the right one. All we could see was hounds disappearing over the next brow only to gallop and jump like mad and see the same. Poor Sid had to jump couple of hairy places to keep up.
At one stage I jumped a very decent drop hedge and his pony stopped. There was no way on earth I could get back uphill over it and I had no idea which way to send him round, AND hounds were still screaming. Luckily he got over at the second attempt and we finished in a valley just above Bath, having negotiated some hairy places with just the first whipper-in, our master and his father, who was visiting from up north, and one totally and utterly addicted son. His grin hacking back to the rest of the field and all the kind words of encouragement from others for “getting the hunt” was magical and one of my best Christmas presents.
Former Quorn field master Will Cursham
As a child my Christmas holidays were always defined by hunting. One of my earliest Christmas hunting memories was a day with the South Notts on Christmas Eve. The meet was at Colston Bassett. I remember for some reason I was reluctant, because my Dad had to wrench me out of bed and march me down to the stables. Once I was out, however, it was a different story. I had never jumped so many fences, and my pony, a 14.2hh skewbald called Henry who was inclined to run off with me if he got bored, was an absolute star. We even jumped a five-bar gate on to a canal. I came back buzzing and it was the perfect Christmas Eve.
My best Christmas hunting memory is from a few years later. I was 15 and had just graduated on to my first horse, a lovely 15.2hh skewbald called Apache. For the first time ever, I was allowed out on a Quorn Monday; in those days, if you were riding a pony, you were only really allowed out on Tuesdays and Saturdays, which were the quieter days when the doghounds were hunting.
The meet was just down the road from where I lived, at Hickling Manor. It was the bitch pack and Michael Farrin was hunting them. I had never seen such a quiet, consummate horseman, but had heard a lot about him from my Dad. Captain Fred Barker was field mastering and he gave the huge field a wonderful ride. It was the cream of Quorn Monday country and we jumped hedge after hedge after hedge. I couldn’t believe my little horse could jump such big obstacles, but he absolutely loved it. We even managed to jump a hedge with a proper brook behind it.
It was magical, and Muxlow Hill and the Hickling Standard were etched on my memory forever as hunting paradises. That was the first time I properly caught the hunting bug. I remember going back home afterwards and talking about it to my father for hours. I told him that I didn’t need any Christmas presents after that!
Andrew Sallis, master and huntsman of the Kimblewick
When hunting hounds pre-ban, we took all hounds and horses on a Christmas Day morning exercise. Across the downs and on car-less roads, it seemed like a fun way to start the festivities. After an hour or so our thirst needed quenching so we cold-called in on a hunt supporter for liquid sustenance. The whiskey was flowing, served by newly awoken friends in their dressing gowns, when “booo” chimed Barmston from a gorse bank behind the garden. Forty couple of hounds pricked their ears and dashed to his clarion call.
After a mile we were eventually on terms with hounds and it was time to pick them up. My kennel-huntsman gamely tried cheering them on further but we were about to enter the scene of a large Boxing Day shoot whose birds, let alone the keeper might have been surprised to see us on Christmas morning. We returned to kennels, buzzing like naughty school children and no one else ever knew a thing.
Pytchley huntsman Daniel Cherriman
There are certain days during the season when you really hope for a good day. Christmas Eve is one such day for me. I find it sets you up perfectly for Christmas and leaves you with a lingering feeling of warm satisfaction which wells up when ever you have time to sit and reflect on Christmas Day and there after.
Last year was one of my favourites. We’d met at Charwelton and had a busy enough morning. The majority of people went home at second horses, no doubt off to make their Christmas preparations, but it wasn’t until about 3pm that the best of the hunting began. We hit off a line near Preston Capes and the hounds fairly set sail. It was one of those lovely scenting days for a huntsman where you could keep up with hounds but didn’t really have to do much; they would check, have a quick cast, regather the line and surge forward with renewed vigour.
They hunted on into fading light and it was almost complete darkness when the hunt concluded. There were just four of us present for the duration of the hunt, my whipper-in Paul Davis, joint-master Rowan Cope, doctor Katy Clarke and me. It was bitterly cold as we hacked home but the glow on our faces was warmer then the chimneys in the village. Days like that are the sort of Christmas present money can’t buy.
H&H hunting reporter Rebecca Jordan
When my father hunted the Blackmore and Sparkford Vale in the late 1970s, my parents’ pre-Christmas routine was a flurry of festive parties. I had no problem with this. Tony and Helen Herring probably did. They had to put up with an annoying and spoilt nine-year old until the early hours.
It was bliss: Tony, my father’s kennel-huntsman, ex-Army and a professional showjumper, wasn’t going to let me disturb him watching the showjumping at Olympia on TV. Rugged up in one of the armchairs, he kept me topped up with some sort of creamy whisky liqueur (well before the days of Baileys) and I watched the electrifying and magical world of Olympia unfold in front of me.
All of a sudden I would find myself stumbling out to the car swaddled from the sharp frost. Hounds were singing their hearts out — they always struck up as soon as they heard Dad’s car drive into kennels. The memory of their music at this time of year still beats any Christmas carol for bringing out the festive spirit.
The weather has remained consistent across Belvoir domains. Consistently wet, that is. Statistically, a fall is more likely to result in drowning than a broken bone. We are now beginning to refer to “port and starboard” sides to coverts and “weigh anchor” instead of “hounds please”.
A joint-master who is hunting twice a week on a 23-year-old grade A showjumper as he approaches his 80th birthday has no plans to hang up his boots.
Derek Clackett, who marks his milestone on 17 January, was out with the Jersey Drag Hunt on New Year’s Day, popping fences on Mr Personality (Roger).
“Together, we add up to quite an age!” Mr Clackett, who has also showjumped for Jersey and competed in dressage, told H&H.
“He was pretty good at dressage too; at least elementary level, in my view, but I think what makes a good hunt horse is one who’s good at showjumping and dressage – you can open a gate from them, or jump it.
“I look after him, nurse him a bit; I share duties with another master so I might go towards the back or take another line but he’s perfect. A snaffle mouth, no martingale, stands like a rock and gallops on command.
“I’ve had good hunters but he has to be among the best.”
Derek Clackett with his daughters and daughter-in-law on New Year’s Day
Asked if Roger is Irish-bred, Mr Clackett laughed.
“I have to say – although all the other horses in my yard are Irish, he’s a blessed Dutch warmblood, I’m almost ashamed to say it!” he said.
Mr Clackett, who has served as chairman of the Jersey Pony Club and British Showjumping club, and president of the hunt, is undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma, but has not let that stop him, as his New Year’s Day meet was days after a session of treatment.
“One of my mantras has always been ‘if you’re not well, go hunting’,” he said.
“In the army, soldiers used to have a good old night out, till 4am and could barely stand, then at 5.30am, they’d be in full uniform, go for a gallop, and when they came back, they’d have a good old breakfast.
“My daughters will bear me out; you always feel better when you come back. And as well as the mental side of it, I’m sure there are medical benefits, as well as being in the fresh air and everything moving about.
“I’d hate to say I’m an example but having made my age, I put it down to being outside with a shovel full of you know what.”
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Mr Clackett, who still runs a surveying practice, also comes to England twice a year to hunt with the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, on Exmoor “where it always rains”.
And his family are chips off the old block; while his wife no longer hunts, his two daughters, daughter-in-law and all but the youngest of his eight grandchildren have all followed hounds, while his oldest has showjumped for Jersey and the youngest looks set to follow suit.
Mr Clackett has no plans to stop hunting “unless anyone orders me too, and I don’t think they will”.
“Every time I approach a certain age – I used to think when I got to 70, I’d think about stopping, then it was 75, then 80, and I’m looking at 85 now,” he said.
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Her 16-year-old hunter Finn has also had a spell of gruelling treament, after he was first diagnosed with uveitis and then hospitalised with sinusitis, which required surgery.
“He was diagnosed with sinusitis at the end of October and both of us were in and out of hospital,” said Jayde. “He had to have a hole drilled in his head and his sinuses drained at the beginning of November.
“It’s amazing how quickly he has come back. He was drained for three or four days and then they stitched him up. Once the stitches were out I was able to ride him again.”
Vets originally thought the discharge out of the 17.2hh gelding’s left nostril was linked to his earlier diagnosis of uveitis, which affected the same side, but he was sent for a CT scan when his condition worsened.
“His runny nose just got thicker and thicker,” Jayde said. “We’re not 100% sure whether or not the conditions were linked but since he had surgery his eye has been really good. We take precautions for the uveitis, so he wears a mask on sunny days.”
Jayde, who continued to hunt and compete throughout her cancer treatment, said making the Boxing Day meet of the Staff College Sandhurst Draghounds had been a goal.
“When I said to the vets that Finn is a hunter they said ‘we can guarantee you’ll be hunting on Boxing Day’,” she said. “We were glad to be back out, and being told I had the all-clear on Christmas Eve made it a great Christmas present.
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“Finn absolutely loves hunting,” she added. “He used to be a showjumper in Ireland and then he was a hunt hireling but we bought him off one of the masters of the hunt two years ago. It’s his favourite thing — he will take you over any country and any hedge.”
Jayde said she was feeling well but a “bit tired” now her treatment is over but is gearing up to return to her job with a construction company in the next couple of weeks.
“Hopefully Finn will be out most weeks for the rest of the season, unless we get too much rain,” she said. “I have also just brought my eventer Baz back into work, so I should have him to compete this year.”
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Eve of Christmas Eve: the tactic of trying not to visit farmers when it’s raining stair-rods has been flawed this season. I spent much of the week negotiating country for tomorrow and after two months of rain, even I have to admit it is a little damp in places now.
All but two out of 30 farmers are happy — well, graciously prepared to grant access at least to hounds and hunt staff. Now it’s up to the trail-layer and the field master to craft a top day.
A hunt chairman who was found not guilty of attacking two saboteurs has said he will now be making a complaint against the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Immigration judge Mark Davies was involved in an altercation with sabs at a meet of the Barlow on New Year’s Day 2019, but was the only one who found himself in court despite having photographic evidence of the bloodied nose and lip he sustained.
The 67-year-old was cleared this week of assaulting Sheffield Hunt Saboteurs members Austin Jordan and William Robinson in a field on private land at Highlightley Farm in Barlow, Derbyshire.
Ruling on the case at Chesterfield Magistrates’ Court, Judge Davison said that the circumstances had indicated aggravated trespass on the part of the saboteurs who were disrupting a legal activity. He also accepted that Mr Davies had acted in self-defence.
Mr Davies’s solicitor Stephen Welford told H&H that the decision to prosecute his client was one of the most surprising he had come across in 20 years of practice.
“In my view it was unreasonable and irrational in the light of the totality of the evidence the prosecution had,” he said.
The day after the trial, Mr Davies said he hoped the case had “shown these people [the saboteurs] for what they are”.
“They are anarchists with no interest in animal welfare at all, it’s a class war,” he said.
He described how the protestors had plagued almost every meet of the Barlow, of which his wife Joan Williams — a former superintendent at South Yorkshire Police — is a joint master.
“While the landowners are very supportive, these people just trespass and don’t get off when they are told. They think they have the legal right to go where they want because they claim we are committing offences,” he said.
“I am a person of good character and I have never used violence against anyone in my life. My wife spent 30 years in the police and is well used to these situations but their behaviour has caused a lot of anxiety.”
Mr Davies and his wife, whose arm was in a sling, were observing the hunt on New Year’s Day when they were approached by the sabs wearing combat clothing and masks.
In court, he told how he had “felt intimidated” by the group and stepped towards them with his arms out to prevent them trespassing further. He said that the next thing he recollected was being struck in the face by someone he later found out to be Mr Jordan.
After he found himself “surrounded” by the antis, he jumped to his feet and took Mr Jordan down in a “rugby tackle” to avoid being assaulted again.
Mr Davies made a complaint of assault but it was not taken further by Derbyshire Constabulary. Yet after they were called in for interview in February, sabs Mr Jordan and Mr Robinson alleged it was they who had been attacked.
Mr Davies told H&H he believes his position had made him a target for prosecution.
“As a judge I am very vulnerable — it’s newsworthy if a judge allegedly assaults someone as judges don’t behave like that,” he said.
“Derbyshire Constabulary and the CPS should hang their heads in shame the way they have behaved in this matter. I will be making another formal complaint to the chief constable and crime commissioner and a formal complaint to the director of public prosecutions who oversees CPS East Midlands.”
Mr Davies, who has been the target of abuse online, added that social media sites also needed to “bear up to their responsibilities” and stop “aiding and abetting” the victimisation of individuals.
Mr Welford has taken on many cases for hunts in the past decade and said there has been a recent increase in the number of prosecutions.
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Rather than breaches of the Hunting Act, the cases were typically complaints of assault made by saboteurs.
“There is a marked increased in attention from hunt saboteurs who are becoming increasingly sophisticated in ways of interfering and sabbing, as well as their widespread use of video equipment, they are also very good at provoking a reaction from members of the hunt,” he said.
“Of the 30 or so police stations I am called to each year, I would say 90% of the complaints are violence alleged by hunt sabs. They are convinced the hunts aren’t trail hunting and are adamant they are allowed to go wherever they like to spot illegal hunting but they are not.
“Many times you find cases where a person of good character has asked a trespasser to leave — and they are legally allowed to use reasonable force — and the situation has ended up out of hand.
“Hunts can’t just keep their heads down any more,” he added. “Sabs make a lot of allegations but there are rarely any from the hunt supporters.”
In a statement, Sheffield Hunt Saboteurs described the verdict of Mr Davies case as “disappointing” and claimed the case was originally taken to the police by the hunt as “a spurious complaint against a sab”.
A spokesman for Derbyshire Constabulary said the force had not yet received a complaint from Mr Davies, but if it did, it “would consider it”.
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A couple celebrated their wedding day in unusual style when they combined their reception with a “champagne meet” of the South Dorset hunt.
Doctors Hennie Helliwell and Danno Turk had organised a small, private ceremony in a clifftop church in Holworth, Dorset on 28 December, when they realised that there was plenty of time afterwards to fit in some hunting.
“We have lots of nieces and nephews under five, so we had to have an early morning wedding,” said Hennie, who comes from Dorset but now lives in Bath.
“As we were planning, we realised we would be finished by 9.30am, so we had a last-minute idea to combine it with a meet. I grew up hunting with the South Dorset, so we contacted Toby Coles and the other masters and they kindly let us have a champagne meet reception.”
A couple of days before the wedding, disaster struck when the hounds were unwell but the South Dorset was still able to hold the meet, which became a hunt ride.
“We got to ride out with Toby and were jumping some quite big fences — things seemed to get bigger and bigger after we had had the champagne,” said Hennie, who has been hunting with the South Dorset since she was 13, and thanked the masters for putting the ride on. “We finished after a couple of hours and then got to unwind in our B&B.”
“It was a great way to start married life,” she added. “We both worked Christmas and New Year’s Day, so it was really special for us.”
Hennie and Danno struggled to both get time off for a big ceremony, so also plan to have a full-scale white wedding in May.
The couple met in London but now both work in hospital in Bath and although they used “fantastic” hirelings provided by Emma Harris for their wedding-day ride, they both have their own horses, a former racehorse and a former high-goal polo pony.
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While they compete in some local shows, Hennie said they like to use their limited spare time to go on riding holidays.
“We like to unwind with the horses on our days off,” she said. “We like to box them up and go away for a week at a time somewhere. We’re going to Exmoor next and we also recently did an unguided riding holiday through the Pyrenees.”
“It’s great to have a shared interest,” she added. “Danno is very proficient at mucking out and exercising!”
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Martha, Lady Sitwell, on 10 years of hunting sideways — and why you’ll never see her in a pair of stretchy breeches. As told to Flora Watkins
I had a bad belly-up at 13, hunting a young horse. I broke my back and neck, and my horse, whom I adored, was fatally injured. I didn’t ride again for many years, then got married and was taken to live in Northamptonshire where I didn’t know anyone. It was really lonely.
I’d be walking my dogs and the hunt would come hooning past — they were all so smiley and friendly, I thought, “You have to man up and get back on a horse.”
Tessa Waugh’s unsentimental nature is challenged as a faithful old steed looks to have reached the end of his hunting road — signalling the end of a charmed four seasons
It never rains but it pours, so the saying goes. In four seasons’ hunting the hounds here, my husband, Adam, has kept going with the same two horses and, in the main, they have stayed remarkably sound. In our two-day-a-week country, Adam hunts one horse one day and one the other, alternating between the two all season. He’s no featherweight, but at the same time he doesn’t cane his horses and they keep going remarkably well, barely missing a day.
We kept marvelling at their sustained run of soundness, but we were also conscious that two horses in their mid-teens wouldn’t do the work forever and had started a tentative search for replacements. Then, last Saturday, this run of luck came to a crushing end.
By now, our community should have toasted the result of the general election. It was proof — and proof was needed — that this country suffers from a vocal minority but, when the chips are down, benefits from a silent majority. Because someone shouts the loudest and is the most aggressive or vitriolic does not mean their strongly held views will resonate with others.
It appears we still live in a country where reasoned debate with a friendly tone is what the majority of us want to see.
As I sat at the meet at Alnwick Castle on New Year’s Day watching my almost two-year-old daughter at her first meet on her pony, it really made me think. I treasure the many memories I have, the things I’ve done and the people I’ve met over the past 35 seasons.
A lot of my first hunting memories were with the Suffolk, where I grew up and started out. I was particularly lucky that the then-huntsman Tom Batterbee was one of the very best in the business. He also worked with one of the best whipper-ins I’ve seen in Sarah Turner. The sport was always of high class, regularly seeing more than 100 horses out each Saturday.
Although aggravated trespass is a criminal offence, the Countryside Alliance says ‘very few’ prosecutions are being brought against animal rights extremists ‘despite clear evidence’ being available, so what is the next step to offer greater protection to hunts and land owners?
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Enforcing the law on aggravated trespass could help combat “intimidatory and disruptive” hunt saboteurs, it is hoped.
The Countryside Alliance is using the current debate on trespassing in relation to travellers — the Conservatives said in their election manifesto they would make intentional trespass a criminal offence in this situation — to challenge current law.
Tessa Waugh considers the folly of lending her horse to her husband to hunt hounds when her charge returns late and punch-drunk — and ponders if he will cope being relegated to the field again
'Goodnight' columist Tessa Waugh with some canine companions.
When you’re married to a huntsman, there are certain things you try to avoid. You can’t always manage it of course, but life is generally more harmonious if you do.
An obvious one might be attempting to talk to your husband while he’s hunting. That’s a basic. Another one, carved into a stone tablet somewhere, is the one that says, “Thou shalt never lend your horse to your husband to hunt hounds.”
Tessa Waugh casts aside her English roots to enjoy a Burns jamboree with the hunt, to find stroked haggis, ferocious auctions and competition for a hike up Northumberland’s summit
Hunt fundraisers: at best a jolly gathering of the like-minded, at worst a grin-and-bear-it endurance test. It’s a constant challenge for every hunt, sexing up the offering to keep the money rolling in, and putting on events that people want to attend.
We’ve had a couple of good ones recently. The hunt dance at Christmas managed to pull in — wait for it — young people. And by young, I mean people in their 20s. Quite a coup. One of Adam’s joint-masters was punching the air.
The five-star eventing stalwart Galley Light is delighting in a new third career on the hunting field.
The former racehorse competed at eight CCI4*s (now CCI5*s) with Ben Way, including a total of six Badmintons and Burghleys.
Elite amateur Ben, who works as a chartered surveyor alongside his eventing career and was H&H’s Burghley first-timer blogger in 2016, scored his best Badminton result to date with the gelding the same year. The pair jumped double clear, adding just 0.4 of a cross-country time fault to their dressage mark, to finish 12th.
Ben told H&H Galley Light’s strength was his carefulness, yet it was also this that led him to call time on the 17-year-old’s glittering career.
“I don’t think he has anything left to prove,” he said. “He has taken me round three Badmintons, three Burghleys, a Pau and a Luhmühlen — he’s been everywhere, but Badminton was his track.
“He was so careful and would try all the time — it was his carefulness showjumping that allowed his career to progress so quickly.”
The Irish-bred thoroughbred, by Turtle Island, went from BE100 to intermediate in two seasons with Camilla Cotton and Ben in the saddle.
Hunting will be Galley Light’s third career. Sold as a €125,000 (£106,000) store (unbroken three- or four-year-old National Hunt prospect), racing proved not to be his calling in life and he failed to come close to troubling the judge on any of his seven starts — his closest finish being fifth, 31 lengths behind the winner.
He was then sold for £3,500 as a hunter, but found it too exciting at the time and then found his niche in eventing.
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As well as Galley Light’s CCI4* achievements, he also finished sixth at Blair CCI3* (now CCI4*-L) in 2014, eighth at Burgham CIC3* (CCI4*-S) in 2016 and 10th at Cappoquin CCI3* (CCI4*-L) in 2018.
Ben added the horse is now “loving hunting”, ridden by either himself or his stepfather John Pritchard, and enjoying days out with the Warwickshire and visiting the Pytchley with Woodland.
“He has been a great servant,” said Ben, who co-owns the horse with Elisabeth Collins.
“Although his early hunting career only lasted about two or three times, now after 10 years of going out and seeing the world he has quietened down a bit — still fidgety and sharp with his back legs — but you can turn him and jump from anywhere.
“It is wonderful for these older horses — he is clipped out, fit and well — the last thing he would want is to be turned away in a field, so for him to be able to go and do another job is lovely.”
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Tessa Waugh (H&H reporter) during the Bedale Hunts Meet at Rookwith House Farm in Rookwith near Bedale in North Yorkshire, UK on the 13th January 2018
“I’ve got a million and one things to do,” was a phrase my mother used repeatedly when my sister and I were young. It was white noise then, but as I trundle through adulthood I understand the complaint. Like most people at this stage of life, I have a list of jobs stretching to infinity and need to complete several each day to ward off chaos.
For most masters of hounds, 1 February has become a very significant date in their diaries. Days hunting are mainly coordinated around shooting dates, so the end of the shooting season allows many hunts to access land that they have not previously been able to hunt over.
This is often perfect timing as the wet vales that have been hunted regularly throughout the season begin to close down as harrowing and rolling need to be done and stock returned to the fields. In lots of places the move to the higher, well-shot ground is essential at this time of year.
Following recent discussions about the benefits of gumshields for riders, H&H canvassed opinions from governing bodies’ chief medical advisers, a dentist and mouthguard specialist, plus riders from across the disciplines...
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Debate over the use of gumshields in equestrian sport has resurfaced following a call from a high-profile jockey and discussion at the International Eventing Forum.
The 20-time Grade One-winning jockey Paddy Brennan called for “every jump jockey to be wearing” a gumshield, adding that his “saved his head” in a fall at Leicester last month.
While talking about the best way to fall at the International Eventing Forum at Hartpury (3 February), orthopaedic surgeon Michael Eames said wearing a gumshield can help dissipate the energy in your jaw and neck, reducing the risk of a head injury.
Although there is no conclusive evidence gumshields reduce a person’s risk of concussion, some who wear them are convinced of the benefits, and they can certainly help prevent dental injuries, which are painful, inconvenient and expensive.
