One Big Thing: Accommodating natural hair with correct helmet fitting
We love seeing big brands working to ensure equal safety standards for riders across all ethnicities and backgrounds, and Charles Owen has definitely stepped up. Knowing that the safest helmet is a helmet that fits, Charles Owen has created a specialist training module within their retailer education platform to ensure every stockist and retail partner is equipped with the technical and practical knowledge to correctly fit helmets for riders with Afro-Caribbean hair.
Taking this education even further, Charles Owen will also be sponsoring and presenting at the British Equestrian Trade Association (BETA)’s Safety Conference on April 21 — allowing them to further the reach of these educational materials and widely distribute the information throughout the industry.
About the BETA Safety Conference
While BETA hosts several conferences and summits each year focused on equestrian business and other aspects of the industry, this will be their first year offering the Safety Conference. This event is aimed at retailers, manufacturers, and professionals in the industry, with a focus on new developments in rider safety equipment, fitting, and research.
With representatives from the FEI, industry leaders, speakers from academia and research, and top event riders, BETA intends to provide their participants with useful information that will tangibly help with sales, fitting, safety, and support — allowing customers to make more informed choices.
US Events This Weekend
Pine Top Advanced: [Website] [Entries/Ride Times] [Volunteer] [Scoring]
Three Lakes Winter II HT at Caudle Ranch: [Entries/Ride Times] [Volunteer] [Scoring]
Other Links and Reading
Sponsor Corner: Stable View
Stable View is looking forward to welcoming Riders to the first stand-alone Intercollegiate, Interscholastic, and Alumni Championships this May 15-17, open to only program participants. After hosting 155 intercollegiate entries across 41 teams at the 2025 USEA Intercollegiate Eventing Championship, Stable View hopes to increase the entries this year to welcome 10 additional teams.
“Stable View is looking forward to welcoming students to the first standalone USEA Intercollegiate & Interscholastic Eventing Championships,” said Barry Olliff, co-owner of Stable View with his wife, Cindy Olliff. “The ongoing development of these Championships has been very inspiring to watch. We will be continuing to play our part in what has become one of the outstanding events on the Stable View Eventing calendar.”
And if you are an intercollegiate graduate, don’t worry — you can now represent your old college in a new team as an alumnus! Learn more about the exciting educational opportunities in store for the 2026 Championships [here].
Training Tip of the Day
Building off of yesterday’s Training Tip, dressage rider Allie Schmidt now covers proper half-halts in the canter:
Go Eventing
Just days after the loss of Michael Jung’s legendary partner La Biosthetique Sam, we now hear that Laura Collett has also had to say farewell to her wonderful horse Mr. Bass (“Chuck”). Watch their 2nd place run at Blenheim palace in 2017 below:
