A new age of frangible fences will feature on cross-country tracks at the Eventing Spring Carnival at Thoresby next week (28 to 30 March) following extensive work by leading figures in safety, design and course-building.
Swedish inventor Mats Bjornetun, the brains behind MIM clip frangible technology, worked on the designs with event organiser and course-designer Stuart Buntine, as well as members of Mr Buntine’s course-building team, Will Seely and Chris Eaton.
Watch a video of how the frangible hay feeder fence works in the short clip below
*The fence will be properly secured to the ground at the event, the below video is for illustration purposes only
Watch the video“I’ve always liked to push barriers and try new things, and I’ve always been interested in safety,” said Mr Buntine, director of organisers BEDE Events and chairman of the FEI eventing risk management steering group.
“Experience has compelled me to question, if we could make the sport safer, why would we not?”
This is how the ‘parallelogram’ looks when the MIM clip is activated.
Mr Bjornetun added: “We are into a development session that will never end.”
The series of fences all work on the existing MIM technology used in frangible tables – and as seen in the deformable trakehner used at Osberton in 2024. This “parallelogram” system incorporates MIM clips and collapses when hit with force.
The team has now found ways to incorporate the frangible “chassis” into a host of different types of fence. For example, arrowheads, hay feeders roll-tops, and a more classic looking table, all designed to conceal the technology. Fences can be reset in seconds after activation, by lifting them back into place and replacing the MIM clip.
A frangible arrowhead.
A frangible rolltop.
Mr Buntine told those at the launch on 18 March that one big aim has been to move away from the Meccano-like aesthetic of frangible tables, towards the look of fences historically seen on cross-country courses.
“What I wanted to do is come up with fences that people didn’t look at and say, ‘Oh, that’s a frangible, because it looks it’,” he said. “This work now is to start to make them look more traditional. They’re normal cross-country fences – but they are frangible.”
He stressed that the work around frangibles is, and always will be, a work in progress. That includes learnings in design and construction, as well as questions around “soft” activations, when a frangible device activates but does not appear to be the result of a competitor having a bad jump.
“It’s a step on the road. It’s not an end result. The more people that push barriers and expand on ideas, the better,” he said.
“We will get better. All the time, I’m talking to Mats and Dave [Vos, an engineer and expert in frangibles], saying ‘yes, but… let’s push back on what’s been accepted today – can we challenge that to get it better?’”
He added: “You’re never going to eliminate risk. Whatever we do when we gallop a horse across country, there’s always risk. We’ve got to reduce rotational falls, because that is where the big risk is.”
Other event organisers and designers also attended.
Five-star course designer Mike Etherington-Smith was among those there and spoke favourably about what he saw.
“Everybody is really happy to share ideas in our world, which is great,” he told H&H, adding that he was “really pleased” he went and has already been sharing insights from the day with other professionals around the world.
Georgie Campbell’s sister Jo Williams also spoke at the launch, as one of the two main aims of the Georgie Campbell Foundation is to enhance rider and horse safety by supporting the implementation of frangible devices to reduce the risk of rotational falls.
She explained that they are keen to establish what the current baseline is, in terms of research, usage and what is happening around the world, to form a roadmap and be clear about how money raised is going to help.
“Something I’ve seen in my professional life, is that what gets measured, gets done,” she said.
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