HOW TECH IS CHANGING HORSE RIDING

From smart apps sending alerts in case of a horse rider’s fall to sensors designed to keep the animal’s health status under control before a competition. The technological revolution affecting horse riding.

Technology is now an inseparable part of our society, home, and hobbies. Even traditional sports like horse riding can’t avoid it. In fact, horse shows have been more and more subjected to technological innovations in the last 10 years: from safety, comfort and performance, riders even use VR (Virtual Reality) for training. But how is technology changing horse riding?

Safety and comfort

Safety was the first reason why technology came into this sport. In fact, horse riding is a sport where safety is really important, and many start-ups have made a business out of it with the creation of smart devices connected to apps with GPS. These apps will send alerts to the riders’ families or rescue teams in case of a fall, and at present they attract a large number of riders, from amateurs to professionals. Geeky Girl surveyed 210 riders on the use of technology in horse riding, 49 per cent of which argued their use had increased safety and performance.

The Tagalo app, for example, has analysed 500 different types of stuntmen’s falls, from Pegase Prod in France. Thanks to that, the app can understand the difference between a rider falling and a horse jumping and safely touching the ground afterwards. These kinds of apps can be really useful for riders training alone, as, if the rider falls, the app will react asking them to press a button. If there is no response, then the rider will be considered unconscious and an alert is sent. If the rider reacts, he can choose if he wants to send an alert or not depending on the seriousness of the fall.

Horse comfort is another aspect riders are really interested in. Products like smart horse covers, through which it is possible to analyse a horse’s temperature, are really popular on the market and, as other smart products, they can be connected to dedicated apps, too.

While there are affordable horse covers on the market, such as those sold by Decathlon for €89.90 (£80), covers for competition horses can be much more expensive, reaching €530 (£475) for a massage horse cover. Horse owners are taking the comfort of their animals more and more into consideration nowadays, especially competition horses, which can be worth thousands of pounds. Yet owners of hobby horses may find these kinds of products useful just as much, especially if their horse is really old. In fact, in a survey conducted by Geeky Girl, 24.8 per cent of respondents indicated comfort as the most important factor when shopping for smart horse products.

PERFORMANCE

Performance is another factor riders take into consideration when buying smart devices for their horses. Products like smart straps will analyse a horse’s heart rate, gait and jumps’ quality. As for smart horses’ straps, the ones sold by Seaver seem to be really popular among professional riders.

“Seaver’s straps will give you a lot of information on the physiological state of your horse while training, from their performance to their health,“ says Mélène Laporte, a Seaver horse salesperson. After all, collecting data on a horse during training is as useful as it would be for any athlete in any other sport.

Quentin Faucher, international horse rider, relies on the smart straps when it comes to his horse’s heart rate and speed, as by holding this information he can then adapt his “horse’s canter training depending on the competition” he is preparing for.

Mélène Laporte says these kinds of products are aimed at anyone working with a competition horse, both at an amateurs or professional level. However not everybody agrees.

“In my opinion, these products are made for professionals [only], who will know how to make a better use of them,” says Quentin Faucher,“[as] sometimes the data provided by these apps can be really hard to understand for a non-professional.“

Amateur riders are also really interested in the health-related data that smart devices can provide.

As an example, Victoria Hocques, amateur rider, has bought a smart sensor to keep her horse’s tendinitis under control. She finds the sensor really useful as it allows her to rely on objective data rather than personal impressions when it comes to her horse’s health. The sensor, made by Equisense, has also helped her when observing her horse’s trot symmetry when jumping bounces, a type of fence-like obstacle typical of horse riding.

However, Justine Quintin, riding coach and amateur jumping rider, has some doubts on the reliability of these products. According to her, the problem with these devices lies in the fact that data needs to be put into context sometimes for it to be 100 per cent reliable. In her opinion, these objects may be possibly useful for performance tracking purposes, but not for analysing a horse’s health.

TECHNOLOGY’S HELP IN COMPETITIONS

Smart horse products are connected to apps that collect a lot of data, but should this data be regarded as reliable in competitions? In a survey conducted by Geeky Girl, 57.5 per cent of respondents argued that these devices are only useful during training, helping to improve performance, but not during competitions. However, 11.2 per cent of respondents argued smart devices could actually have an impact on competition rankings.

Victoria Hocques thinks technology helped her analyse the mistakes she made during competitions, but didn’t influence her performance.

“Right now, I would say [technology] it is not really helping riders during competitions. It did not help me. [Maybe] in the future, if we could monitor the horse’s heart rate from a watch or something like that during cross-country races…“, says Quentin Faucher, who wonders whether smart devices might make competitions unfair if more and more riders started to use them.

“If the rider uses all the data collected by a smart device’s app every day,” says Laporte, “in the end this could help their horse improve their performance, but during competitions the app will only be collecting data,” thus providing no extra help to the rider.

Geeky Girl asked FEI (International Equestrian Federation) to comment on the impact of smart devices in the ranking of international competitions. However, they did not respond.

In conclusion, every person we surveyed, from amateur to professional riders, agrees on the fact that smart devices can help, but they cannot act as a substitute to the human eye, a coach or a rider.

The traditional world of horse riding has welcomed the addition of technology quite positively, despite some scepticism. “There will always be sceptical people,” says Victoria Hocques, “we just have to see [technology] it as a support, not more.“

Faucher, too, believes horse riding is something that needs a human input and has to be learnt by practice. “It’s not something we can understand from apps or data,” he says, “these devices can help in performances or when coaching riders from a distance, but they will not replace real humans.“