Safety & Personal Protective Equipment

PROTECTIVE HEADGEAR
At FEI Events, wearing a properly fastened protective headgear is mandatory when riding on the show grounds.
In the competition arena venue and adjacent warm-up areas, as well as riding from one to the other and from the stables for the purposes of competing, the protective headgear requirements are governed by the rules of the discipline concerned. 
Wearing a well fitted, properly fastened protective headgear is absolutely essential to mitigate the risk of serious head injury and/or concussion in case of  a fall. The FEI urges all equestrian athletes to wear protective headgear whenever riding a horse or driving a carriage.

TESTING STANDARDS FOR PROTECTIVE HEADGEAR
The FEI maintains a list of international testing standards (published here - you will be redirected to the FEI Rules page) to which all protective headgear used at international events must comply.
Parallel to this, the FEI Helmet Working Group, created in 2023, has put forward a set of key proposals to strengthen the current testing standards for equestrian helmets in order to offer athletes better protection from head injuries. The FEI intends to work collaboratively with manufactures and helmet standard bodies to achieve these goals, which should be viewed as a new, quickly achievable step forward in reducing the transmitted energy to the brain. Meanwhile, the FEI Helmet Working Group will continue their efforts to improve helmet effectiveness as new research and technology become available.


 

 

 

References

The FEI’s general regulatory requirements on athlete safety and welfare are set out in the FEI General Regulations.

Additional discipline-specific requirements may be found in the relevant Sports rules.

Anti-Doping matters are regulated in the FEI’s Anti-Doping Rules for Human Athletes (ADRHA).

These documents can be found in the “FEI Rules” section of the Mega Menu .

EN 1384:2017
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