More Equipment-Protective Gear

 

The "body armor" pictured above, along an aging Tipperary Vest and several items of Nike Pro Combat shirts and shorts lay in an expensive heap in our tack area waiting each session for selection by our good rider.Q tends to be-what body parts to cover today, because, frustratingly, none of this armor covers everything.

Riding a 17'1 inch horse over a hardened mud flat, as we do daily, will concentrate one's mind on the concept of body protection. When one inevitably goes down it would be nice to have those shoulders, hips, elbows and knees covered.

Regrettably our search for adequate coverage and protective pattern has been an expensive mess with nothing seemingly available that provides complete protection.  Those $600 equine air bag vests that inflate on ground contact have nothing for the shoulders or elbow, and the idea of protecting hips, knees or e.g. face--nose---has yet to enter our world.

And so we took a look around.  Motorcycle dirt bike racing e.g., and so enter into the RR arsenal the Dainese motorcycle shorts pictured above middle.  They have the hard hip pads for our good rider's weak left hip.  $100 worth of shorts.  And they arrive with the hip pads covering everything "except" the important point of the hip.  The top of the pad just reaches this area (in contrast to the POC shorts on the right were the pad covers the whole hip).

The array of "body armor" choices these days in sports such as snow boarding, skiing, even roller blading is mind boggling.  The best I saw pictured was the $250.00 POC VPD 2.0 Vest above that has just arrived.  Notice the chest, shoulder, and elbow padding of the new state of the art VPD material--a rubbery substance that is light, molds to one's body, and hardens on impact and completely spreads the force of the fall.  Is this the jacket those equine steeple chasers that fall constantly should be wearing?  Continue next post.

Training:  Morning rains this week moved us back to night.  I've handled this poorly and allowed one monsoon to screw up our schedule.  We've gone backward with the tack work this week, and I'm unable to report yet the commencement of serious training.  Still working with the horses every day.  It's raining as this is being typed.