The day my girth snapped mid-round and everything I learned from it

There are moments in eventing that split your timeline into before and after. The sound of a leather girth tearing as I launched over a wide oxer at the Sydney International Equestrian Centre became one of those moments for me and my horse Archie. The day had started like any other competition Sunday, with a careful dressage test and high hopes for the show jumping phase that afternoon. Within seconds I went from riding a flowing round to sliding sideways out of the saddle, scrambling to hold onto an excited warmblood who thought he had been given his head.

I had been eventing long enough to know the discipline is unforgiving in its timing. You prepare, you warm up, you check your tack, you ride your plan. Yet no checklist fully guards against a piece of equipment failing mid-stride. That round taught me more about preparation, gear inspection and personal responsibility than any clinic I had ever attended, and it changed the way I handle every competition morning since.

A carefully planned morning at Horsley Park

The alarm went off before four, which is standard during the warmer months when you float down to SIEC at Horsley Park for a one-day event. By the time Archie stepped off the truck the sky was still navy and the air had that cool, dewy stillness you only get before an Australian summer day arrives. I had packed the float the night before with two spare girths, a backup bridle, an extra pair of gloves and a folding chair. Anyone who has towed a two-horse angle load down the M7 at dawn knows that traffic and unexpected roadworks can chew through the best-laid schedule and turn a comfortable arrival into a sweaty scramble.

I tacked Archie up in the warm-up area using the routine I had refined over countless events. Brush, pick out feet, slip on the shipping boots, then saddle pad, numnah, saddle, girth. I checked the girth on both sides, walked him ten metres, retightened, walked another ten, then retightened again. That last check is something my coach Marg always drills into me, because a warm horse breathes heavily and his girth often loosens by a hole before you reach the entrance of the arena. I noticed the leather looked older than I had remembered, but I trusted my routine and headed into the warm-up arena for a few fences.

The jump that changed everything

The course was typical lower-level stuff, a flowing course of twelve efforts with a tight combination at fence four and an inviting oxer at fence seven that most riders planned to take a stride out to. Archie was jumping out of his skin, fresh from his best dressage score of the season and feeling as enthusiastic as I had seen him in months. We sliced the corner to the first vertical, rode a tidy bending line to the second, and I remember thinking how soft he felt underneath me and how perfectly the rhythm was going. The combination rode sweetly, the striding was right, and I was already working out my approach to the triple bar when I caught a glimpse of the oxer in the distance.

I sat up, half-halted, and asked for a slightly bigger canter stride. Archie took off, lifted his shoulders, and that was when I felt it. The saddle dropped roughly two centimetres to the right side, and the next sound I heard was a soft ripping noise, the kind of sound leather makes when a stitching seam gives way rather than a sudden crack. Time does something strange in those seconds, as if the clock slows down enough for you to take in every small detail. I remember the dirt flying up as Archie's hind legs landed. I remember my left stirrup swinging free. I remember thinking I needed to stop the horse, not the round, and that I needed to stop him now.

Recovering Archie and finishing the day safely

Lucky for me, Archie is an experienced eventer who has seen plenty of odd moments in his career and knows not to take advantage of a rider in trouble. The moment the saddle slipped he slowed himself, which is the kind of horse sense you cannot train into a green horse. I managed to slide out of the saddle on the right side, landing on my feet on the soft arena sand, and held the reins firmly so he would not bolt towards the other horses warming up on the other side of the warm-up area. Within seconds a course official was on the radio and a steward from Equestrian Australia was jogging across the arena with a lead rope and a calm voice that immediately settled Archie down.

We did not complete the round, which meant an elimination, but finishing the round was never really the point of that minute. The priority was getting Archie and me safely to the edge of the arena and checking him over for any rubs or pressure marks from the shifted saddle. The steward walked him while I caught my breath and checked my own bruises, and a fellow competitor ran over with a tube of tea-tree-based antiseptic cream in case Archie had any sweat rash under the saddle area. Australian horse people, especially the long-suffering eventing community, drop everything when they see someone in trouble, and that day at SIEC was no different. By the time I walked Archie back to the float I had offers of help from four different riders, a spare set of studs from a fellow New South Welshwoman and a strong coffee from a mum at the next float.

What I learned about why girths actually fail

Once I got home and washed the sweat off the saddle and girth, I sat down at the kitchen table and inspected the broken girth carefully with a torch. The leather itself was in reasonable condition, but the stitching on the main buckle had started to fray at the bottom edge where the leather folds over the buckle, and the girth had clearly stretched out of shape from years of use and humid storage in the tack room. Talking with my saddler in the Southern Highlands the following week, I learned that leather girths generally last between five and ten years depending on care, sweat exposure and storage conditions, and that almost every girth failure he sees involves either frayed stitching, cracked leather around the buckle area, or worn elastic on a half-moon design.

I had been buying the cheapest girth that still looked decent, which is a common mistake for grassroots riders trying to keep costs down while still competing every couple of weeks. A reasonable synthetic girth from a major Australian retailer will run you around seventy to one hundred and twenty Australian dollars, while a quality leather girth from a specialist saddler is closer to two hundred and fifty or more. For a discipline like eventing, where you cannot just step off the course mid-fence, that extra spend is not luxury, it is essential. I also learned that long-fibre girths with stainless steel buckles are popular among Australian eventers because they handle our climate well, particularly the humidity we get during the Sydney summer and the dust we get during inland events. I now keep a small notebook next to the saddle rack where I record the date I start using each piece of tack and the date I plan to retire it.

Rebuilding my pre-ride routine from the ground up

After the incident I rewrote my whole tack inspection routine, top to bottom, and I now go through the same checklist at every event regardless of how casual it might feel. I do a full visual and manual check of every piece of leather and webbing before I load the float, then again when I unload at the venue, then again before I tack up for the warm-up. I look for cracked stitching, weakened leather, stretched holes, any rust on metal fittings and any sharp edges on buckles. I also rotate two girths in my competition bag and replace whichever is older at the start of every season, which makes the cost of replacing tack more predictable rather than a panicked purchase after something goes wrong.

I added two other things to my routine that have changed the way I think about competition mornings. First, I now photograph my girth and saddle before each event so I have a dated visual record of wear that I can refer back to if I am in any doubt about a piece of gear. Second, I keep a small repair kit in the float with a leather punch, a spare girth strap, a multi-tool and a couple of buckles, just in case I find a small issue on the morning of the class. AERA rules require that all tack used in competition must be in good working order, and our state-level biosecurity guidelines also expect you to maintain gear properly so it does not become a welfare issue for the horse. None of these steps take more than a few minutes, but they have turned my competition mornings from a hopeful shrug into a proper inspection process.

Returning to the ring at Werribee Park

The first major event I went back to after the broken girth was the Melbourne Three Day Event at Werribee Park, a venue with its own kind of gravity for Australian eventers and one I had watched on the live stream for years before I finally competed there. The course is bigger and more technical than anything we have at home in New South Wales, the crowd along the cross-country is enormous, and the atmosphere is enough to make any horse fresh on the second day. I drove down a few days early so Archie could settle into the new float trip, adjust to the cooler southern climate, which can be quite different from what we get at home during autumn, and get used to the new grounds before the dressage phase began.

I rode my pre-round inspection like a small ritual, almost meditative, going over every strap and buckle in the same order I had practised at home. I checked the girth stitching, I checked the buckle, I checked the billet straps on the saddle and I walked Archie out twice before I asked for any trot. When I finally went into the show jumping arena on Archie I felt something I had not felt for a long time, even though I had been competing regularly for years. I felt ready, not just hopeful. Archie flew around clear inside the time, and when I walked out of the ring with my stirrups still firmly in place I gave that girth a quiet pat under the saddle flap. Eventing will always have its scary moments, and I will probably never fully erase the memory of sliding sideways out of the saddle that day at SIEC. But I have learned that preparation is not just about schooling, it is about every strap, every buckle and every piece of leather that holds you and your horse together.