Recent News > Equestrian Inquest to Date

Equestrian Inquest to Date

Filed in Recent News by Elizabeth Flaherty May 27, 2019

THE first ten days of the coronial inquest into the deaths of 17 year old Olivia Inglis and 19 year old Caitlyn Fischer drew to a close on Friday and will recommence on July 22 at the Coroner’s Court in Lidcombe.

See related stories below.

To date the inquest has heard:

the medic at the Scone Horse Trials was not a trained ambulance officer from NSW Ambulance;
a doctor did not attend scene for 20 minutes;
the medic struggled to operate medical equipment;
Olivia’s mother, Charlotte Inglis, had concerns with five of the jumps at the Scone Horse Trials including 8B on which her daughter died due to slim rails, deceptive appearance and the absence of a ground line;
equestrian, Paul Tapner gave evidence that he would be “exceptionally unhappy” with the jump on which Olivia died;
the jump at the Scone Horse Trials did not meet at least three of the Federation Equestre Internationale cross country course guidelines;
course design experts at the inquest, Mike Etherington-Smith, Alec Lochore and Grant Johnston, unanimously agreed the jumps that Olivia and Caitlyn died were safe;
yet all conceded they would not have designed jump 8B the way it was at the Scone Horse Trials;
Samantha Farrar, the Equestrian Australia investigator, who is also the wife of Equestrian NSW CEO Bruce Farrar, learned Rosie Cohen had a “near miss” on jump 8B at the Scone Horse Trials in 2015, but was told by the panel she was not allowed to interview Ms Cohen;
Ms Farrar found disparate calculations between jump 18A and 18B of 19 metres to 19.94 metres and described obtaining proper data during her investigation as frustrating, and
Ms Farrar was phased out of the investigation, adding many of the suggestions and recommendations she made were taken out of the report.

The CEO of Equestrian Australia, Lucy Warhurst, said, “this Coronial process has been a challenging, confronting and (an) emotional time for many in our equestrian community.”

The statement from Ms Warhurst confirmed the organisation has employed a full-time safety specialist available across eight equestrian disciplines, previously they only had one part-time officer and prior to the deaths in 2016 had none.

Since 2016 Equestrian Australia have:

mandated frangible devices in 2 star and above cross-country events;
mandated minimum standards of event medical services and equipment;
upgraded event briefings with emphasis on safety and risk;
improved training of event volunteers;
been implementing eventing safety rating system to have information on horse performance, and
made the rating system available online.