USHJA On Course Episode 23

USHJA: We're back with episode 23 of USHJA On Course. I'm Terise, and today I'm joined by the chair of the USHJA Safety Committee, Joe Dotoli, to discuss the importance of safety in the sport and the research being done to expand it.

Before we jump in, you know I have some housekeeping from the Association to pass along.

The USHJA Instructor Credential is here! The Credential is designed to offer education for riding instructors in a manner that is more comprehensive and well-rounded than ever before with online coursework and an in-person workshop. Learn more at ushja.org/instructorcredential.

Applications for the J.T. Tallon Memorial Equitation Grant open soon. One junior rider who is qualified for a national equitation championship at a fence height of 3' or higher will receive $1,000 dollars to attend the final. Learn more and keep an eye out for applications at ushja.org/jttallon.

From the saddle to the judge's booth, Joe Dotoli has an extensive history in the Hunter/Jumper sport. He has presided over show rings across the country, has had his hand in the making of events and venues such as the New England Equitation Championships, HITS and Ox Ridge Hunt Club, and along with his wife Fran, is the trainer behind the beginnings of Olympic gold medalist Peter Wylde. Joe also has a strong passion for safety as chair of USHJA's Safety Committee. In the early 2000s, he spearheaded the rule that we now know to require riders to wear helmets on show grounds, and recently led the charge to raise funds for the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab's testing. With the first round of testing done, Joe has his sights set on testing the newest form of safety equipment, air vests.

We caught Joe after a day of judging in Ocala to discuss his impact on the sport and the future of rider safety. Tune in and then read more from Joe about the importance of helmets in the March issue of In Stride at ushja.org/instride.

Tell me how you first got into horses.

Joe Dotoli: Well, the clever line I always say is that I followed a pretty girl to the barn. She left and I stayed, and that's basically it. You know, I was not from a horse family. I grew up mostly in the city, in Boston, just outside it. And a friend of my sister’s got involved with horses when she went overseas to graduate school and she was complaining one morning that she didn't have anybody to go riding with her and would I go with her?

And, you know, like I said, she was pretty, I didn't care where we were going. So yeah, I went riding. But the more important thing is I really, honestly can still remember stepping into that barn. The smell of it and the, you know, the horses in their stalls and chewing on hay and, and you know, it really was a moment for me that I knew I was someplace that I wanted to get more of. And basically it's been ever since.

USHJA: Yeah, you've had quite the career since then, right? You trained Peter Wylde. You've created New England Equitation Championships. Now you're really heavily involved in safety. I feel like we could be here forever going through everything, but what's the quick rundown of those years up to now?

Joe Dotoli: Well, my wife and I, we met at college and we were both amateurs at the time, and you couldn't do anything in the horse world and be paid for it. You know, it's kind of like the amateur rule is today, you know, and it was the same way then, but there was a clause in the rule book at that time that, you know, you could teach writing at a summer camp and you would not be a professional.

So we both took a job at Teela-Wooket Camp in Roxbury, Vermont, which was a very famous old camp. It's not as famous today as it used to be, but people used to go there. Many, many people from the horse world started there. And we became riding instructors there right after we got married in 1969. And we met people that we've stayed friends with our whole careers there. It was a great thing to do and we loved it. But it was one of those deals where you did riding for an hour, you did archery for an hour, you know, you went swimming for an hour and all that. And so a lot of the kids' parents who really wanted the kids to learn how to ride weren't happy with the system, so they asked us if we'd start our own camp. Long story short, after two summers we did that and we had an incredibly successful, we didn't call it a camp, we call it summer riding program up in Vermont, in Randolph, Vermont. And we did that for 15 years, we had some phenomenal customers and kids that we taught, many of whom were still very much in touch with from back then.

Actually, what kind of started to break that up was we started to get a lot of kids who didn't want to leave after the summer was over. They wanted to ride year round with us, you know, so we started our business so that it was year round. And then it got more and more complicated to go up to Vermont for the summer, and especially once we had this little 12-year-old boy named Peter Wylde show up at the barn. And so we had an all girls camp and so it was just getting more complicated all the time. So we decided it was time to give up the camp after 15 years and just do our full-time barn. And you know, that's when we kind of got some of our top riders started then. You know, Peter's the most famous, but we've had a lot of really good riders from Mia Wood to Wendy Barwin to our own daughter who was third in the Maclay Finals and, you know, lots of good ones.

So that was kind of the start of going full-time, doing our own barn and we moved a couple of times, always in Massachusetts. We bought bigger places as we went. And then actually what happened was I got very ill. I taught school all that time too in Boston, so it was a strenuous schedule. I never had a day off for many years. I had to be at my desk teaching at 7:15 on a Monday, and then we went full more when I got home and all on weekends. I didn't have a day off for many years. So, the result was probably predictable. My body gave out and I got very ill. So we had to pull way back and I was on disability retirement from teaching for a couple of years and Fran just did a handful of horses and students and, you know, we just kind of got by for a little while and then took a big chance.

We were sitting at the kitchen table and we're looking through the Chronicle of the Horse and we saw an ad for general manager of Ox Ridge Hunt Club. And we knew that they had had a lot of trouble in the last number of years. You know, they had gone through a bunch of managers, but we also knew what a great place they had the potential to be. So we put in a resume and knowing that maybe if I wasn't going to be as, you know, healthy enough to do what I had always had done, maybe the two of us could do that job and I could kind of get that done without stressing myself out too much. So anyway, we put an application in, they immediately wanted to talk to us, and even though they knew I had been sick, they hired us.

And we went to work at Ox Ridge in 1993--January 1993--and in April 1993 I had a serious but very, very successful operation that really changed my life. And I was back to, you know, full me within a couple of months. So we spent a number of years at Ox Ridge as the general managers and head of their riding program.

We retired, we resigned from there around 2004. And they still loved us and gave us a big party, asked us to replace ourselves, which we did. And went to retire at our house in Vermont, which we had purchased during that time. We had a house up on Lake Champlain, so we were figuring at that time we would just do our judging and we could live wherever we wanted because, you know, all we needed to be was near an airport.

But I wasn't there very long when I got a call from Tom Struzzieri who had been asking me for years to come to work for him and I never really had been able to because we always had a big stable and everything. So when he heard we had retired from Ox Ridge he called me and said, "well, how about now?"

So I started to go to work for HITS as a manager out at Indio and doing my judging and Fran doing her judging. And we had our house up on Lake Champlain and it was nice. Our oldest daughter who had been our rider when we were at Ox Ridge, our professional rider, had gotten a job offer from Belgium from a fellow that we had done a lot of business with over there.

And at first she wasn't interested in it, but I kind of suggested maybe she'd go over and see what it was all about. And she did, and she loved it. So she stayed there for eight years. And after we were nice and comfortably ensconced in our house in Vermont, she and her now husband and baby came back from Belgium because they wanted to raise the kids here.

So after a couple of years of doing that business of just, you know, working for Tom in the winter and doing our judging the rest of the year, we decided it was time to get back in and we got together with our daughter, Annie, and her husband. The four of us bought a farm together in Rhode Island and we were back in it up to our ears.

So, that kind of brings you up the date. We've done a lot of stuff, and then in the meantime, it's certainly worth mentioning a couple of the special things. Peter, of course, is very, very special and has been like family since day one. He is back now training our granddaughter at his request. So it's just very, very special. He's been down here in Ocala most of the winter and he's retired from the main ring, from the big Grand Prix ring, but he still helps us with a lot of horses and helps my granddaughter and it's been fabulous. And we are closer today than we were when he won the Maclay.

USHJA: He's heavily involved in a lot of USHJA stuff as well, so we appreciate him.

Joe Dotoli: Yeah, he's great. He gives back, you know, I think we tried to teach that to all of our kids that you either give back or you don't complain, one or the other. If you just stand at the in gate and complain, you're not accomplishing anything. So anyway, yes, Peter, between the, you know, emerging athletes and a number of other things, he gives back a lot.

And then there's New England finals. Was actually started in 1976. Actually, the idea came from Mason Phelps who had been in California and had moved back to his home in Rhode Island. And at the time New England had zero equitation, none. And so Mason said, well, you know, when I was out in California, they had these 3'3" medals and it helped get the kids started, wouldn't it be a good idea to start? So he got himself on the Board of Directors in the New England Horseman's Council, and they put together this 3'3" medal class and Mason put together a committee to try to run it. And so the very first committee was Mason, myself, Julie Ulrich, Nancy Ciesluk and Jamie Mann, who represented Acres Wild and Paul Valley there at the time. So there were five of us that were the first ones to start the New England Medal, and the first year it had 16 kids in it at a horse show. It was just a class at a horse show, at the finals.

Mason got out of running it very soon. I think he was on the committee for four or five years, maybe three or four years. And then he moved back, you know, wasn't around much anymore. So it sort of fell into my hands to keep the thing going. And we, you know, we expanded the committee and we, you know, we made a lot of great improvements over the years that are very different from anywhere else and has become a very, very loved event and respected event.

That's kind of how that's gone. I've stayed on it the whole time. I've given up the chairmanship of it a long time ago and gave that to Cookie DeSimone and Amy Eidson, they are the chairs of it. But I'm still on the committee and always have been and I still have my two cents, obviously. And we're going to have the 50th anniversary in two years. We're going to have a huge bash ,and myself and a number of other people, that's going to be our swan song and say goodbye and turn it over to some of the younger trainers to keep it up.

And then the safety thing. So when we were at Ox Ridge, there were a number of very bad accidents in the country. People did not want to talk about safety.

A number of us had been trying to get a safety helmet rule passed for a while, and no one was interested. Every year we'd go to the convention and try to get something done and every year a number of top trainers would get up and talk against it, and it just never happened. They always put in the rule book "strongly recommended" and then of course nobody wore them. It was peer pressure. The kids weren't going to wear them, but no one else wore them. You know that stuff.

And then We went through a two and a half year period in the sport where at major "A" horse shows there were five fatalities. One of them was a young professional, and the others were all juniors, and all five were head injuries. And that just was the time that it just had to stop, you know? So I put a letter together to all the helmet makers. I knew they did all their year end stuff at King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. They have their show with all their new products and all that stuff. So I sent them all a letter, asked if they would send a representative to the Holiday Inn in King of Prussia and I rented a room.

And to my surprise, all six companies--there are only six then, there's probably 40 now. All six of them sent their CEO and I said, look, you guys, I know we've promised you this before that we're going to get this passed and we haven't done it, but this time I'm going to get it done. I promise you. And here's how I'm going to back it up.

I'm going to promise you that I'll get the rule passed this year. With a two year waiting period. So the rule will get passed, but it'll be two years before anybody has to wear one. But in those two years, once you see that the rule has passed, you have to promise me you'll make some helmets that our people will wear, because the ones they were making were just not very attractive.

You know, they'll used to be called the bubble heads and all that stuff. So I said, you know, if you'll make me the promise that in two years you'll have some product that we'll wear, I'll make you a promise that you're going to have a whole new market. And so they agreed and so they went to work and I went to work.

I put together a committee of very influential people, including Peter, and we went for the low hanging fruit. We went to the low hanging fruit and decided to try to do just juniors first. So that's what we did. We put the rule through for just juniors and I got myself elected to the Board of Directors at USEF and you know, politicked my way around it a little bit.

And the day of the vote, Alan Balch, we didn't get along great, but I have to totally give him credit. He was a hundred percent behind the helmets. And so when the day of the vote came, I remember there were three or four western guys that were, that represented the western world on the board, and they cornered me in corner of the boardroom and they were like "if you have any idea of making our people wear them helmets you aren’t getting our vote." I said "sir, I have to tell you, I got enough problems with my own people. I have no interest in telling your people what to do." So they said, well, alright, then you'll get your vote. So anyway, it passed. And so that was the beginning of the two year period. Then in two years, they had to be ready.

And we started promoting it so the kids would start ahead of time. My fear was that we put this date out and no one would wear a safety helmet until that date and then they'd all go to buy helmets and there wouldn't be enough. That was what I was worried about, and then we would've had to back off the rule and it would've been a mess. So we started promoting it so the kids would start wearing them, and the GPA got very popular. Almost all the kids went with the GPA. The problem was GPA hadn't gotten approved yet.

Part of the process of getting a helmet approved by ASTM is they have to do a factory inspection because they have to be sure of quality control, which of course makes sense, right? They have to know that the hundredth helmet that comes off the line is the same as the first one that came off the line. So they have to inspect the factory and how the helmets are made and they have to be approved. Well, the problem was GPA was the first of the foreign helmets. They were made in Italy. All the others had been made here. So now they were like, well, how do we get our ASTM committee to Italy? I was like, oh god. You know, but literally like the night before the rule went into effect, GPA got approved. And thank god because 80% of the kids were already wearing GPAs and it would've been a total disaster.

So anyway, it went off really very smoothly after some sleepless nights about GPA. And everybody ended up with a safety helmet on and pretty soon nobody seemed to care. And within a year we decided to tweak the rule. And instead of being juniors, we made it juniors and adults. And then we waited a couple of more years. We thought the last phase might cause some problems, but it didn't. The last phase was everybody while mounted on a horse show grounds. And that's the rule there is.

USHJA: Was there a lot of resistance in those years?

Joe Dotoli: There was tremendous resistance before the rule went into effect. Actually, once the rule went into effect, the resistance really kind of faded away. In that time when we were trying to get the rule passed and all that, it was horrible.

Once the juniors were in them and people got to see, well, these don't look bad, these are actually nice, you know, then it went much more smooth. And honestly, the big difference today is the attitude is 180 degrees from what it was then. I mean, back then, if it didn't look exactly like the cap that you wore in the hunt field, they didn't want to wear it.

You know, now you see that they're athletic looking, they make it look, you know, it really, I think makes it more of a sport and more of a, you know, people can relate to it better. It took away from a little bit of the tradition. Yes. But it changed things dramatically.

USHJA: It's crazy to think about. You mentioned being worried about there not being enough helmets. You know, nobody thinks about getting on a horse without a helmet now, especially at a horse show.

Joe Dotoli: Well, don't forget, there were only six helmet makers. Three of them aren't even in existence anymore. But there weren't many makers, and they were making very few safety helmets because people that showed didn't wear them. So the only people they were making them for was 4-H and Pony Club. And so they didn't make many every year. They made a lot more of the old hunt cap styles, you know? But the old velvet cover and you know, the more faded it got, the cooler you were and all that stuff and you turn the ribbon upside down if you're a professional and you know, all that stuff that went with tradition and that's what people didn't want to give up.

You know, but they had to see the light that these helmets that we were wearing didn't help at all when you hit the ground. All they would do is if you hit your head on a cup or something on the way down, it might keep you from getting a cut. They didn't help any with concussion or head injuries of any kind.

 So that brings us to the next step. So it's now been 20 years since we got that rule passed, and we haven't done anything more in the way of helmets. So, I'm watching and I'm thinking to myself, you know, these helmets are really getting beautiful looking, but they aren't any different. All they still have to do is pass ASTM F1163. So what's the incentive for the makers to make them better? Really, the most biggest incentive is to make them prettier so that people will buy it. Right? But that's business, you know?

So I had been thinking about that for a while. And then Ken Marash, the horse show announcer, he has an interest in safety too. So every now and then he'll send me something. He sent me this article about the work that had been done at Virginia Tech for the NFL and college football and bicycle helmets. The article was actually about football helmets. And the incredible work they've done making those better.

They don't make anything better. They test what the makers have provided, and then by what the test results are, the makers get an idea how they can make their helmets better, basically, you know? So I thought, wow, this is really cool. I wonder if they'd have any interest in us! You know, I mean we're a pretty small niche group, you know, I would think that when you compare the number of bicycle helmets sold each year to the number of riding helmets, it's insignificant, I would think.

 You know but anyway I literally, I talked about Dr. Duma and, you know, the Virginia Tech helmet lab and how creative they were and what great testing they had done for all those groups. So I literally googled Virginia Tech and got an 800 number. Called and said, "Hey, can I talk to Dr. Duma?" And sure enough, half an hour later he called me back and I asked him would they have any interest in doing a riding helmet five star program. It's what they do. They rate the helmets one through five stars depending on how well they perform against concussion.

So, and that's the other thing. Okay, so the riding situation with the ASTM F1163, the standard that we use for our helmets, it's a catastrophic event standard. So it tells you that you have a catastrophic event and a fall from a horse, that helmet will help protect you. That's all that standard really tells you, and they're pretty good at, at helping you in that situation.

The issue develops because between catastrophic event and no event, there's a lot of room there, right? Yeah. I mean, we're only beginning to find out about concussion and multiple concussions and recovery from concussions and all those things that are in every sport right now, learning all that, and we got, we've been learning it too, so wouldn't it be nice if we knew something about what happens with our helmets regarding concussion.

So that's what Virginia Tech study was. It was not to change the standard or anything else. It was to see, okay, we know those helmets work. If you have a terrible accident, how do they work if you just bang your head a little, you know, that's what we want to know. How do they work If you, if you bang your head a lot, but you don't, you know, it's not a fractured skull, it's just a hit to the head? So that's what the Virginia Tech Study was strictly about concussion.

The star rating tells you how many times you would've gotten a concussion in that helmet, having gone through the 30 tests that they did. We're filling in the blanks now. We know we got a helmet that works at a really bad event. Now let's find out which ones work well for the lesser events, and that's what we did. And now, mother or a rider or whatever can go on the Virginia Tech website and they can click on equestrian, they can find the helmet that their child is riding in or wants to buy or whatever the information they're trying to get. They click on that and they'll see that helmet and they'll see what Virginia Tech paid for that helmet, because they don't take donations from the makers, and they'll see how many stars that helmet got. You want a low score, but a lot of stars. So they correlate the stars to the scores so that the helmets that fare the best, it's like golf. The lower the score is, the ones that are the best, but they give them the most stars because that's the way people look at things. So for instance, I know one of the top ones, a 1.4 is the number it got, so it ended up with five stars. Well, that 1.4 means that out of the 30 tests they did on the helmet, you would've gotten 1.4 concussions.

So it gives you an idea of how well that helmet protects. That study is complete. We've done as many helmets as been made available. There are some that still haven't been done because they've been hard to get. But there, you know, by the time the study is complete, all the helmets that are out there will be tested that have pass. They have to have passed ASTM or we won't test it, but if they passed ASTM, they'll get. So it's, it's just more really good information for people to, you know, better protect themselves. We've got a sport that has inherent danger, let's not kid ourselves. On a living creature with, you know, our head is 10 feet above the ground and we're sometimes traveling 30 miles an hour, you know, so let's accept the fact that there's risk with it.

We love our sport, so let's protect ourselves. Use the technology that's available to do a better job protecting ourselves. And then let's get on with what we love.

USHJA: What do you personally think maybe is next in helmet safety?

Joe Dotoli: Well, I think we've got a long way to go on the concussion part. I think there's no question. One of the big things that's going to happen from the Virginia Tech study is not as much what we're going to be able to learn by clicking on the helmets. It's the fact that every helmet maker is going to want a five star. So the, the evolution of helmets is going to take place.

Virginia Tech is already corresponding with a lot of helmet makers on new, they're providing new materials to be tested, new prototypes. The helmets are going to evolve dramatically very quickly because of this study. And that's really almost more important than providing the information to the buyer.

 So that's the next thing we're going to see a really fast and dramatic change in the materials that helmets are made out of, probably how they're made. And so they'll keep evolving for, for a while off of this.

USHJA: I'm not sure if you saw the New York Times article that came out recently. There's been a lot of discussion about different hair types fitting into helmets and, and obviously there's a lack of inclusivity there for a lot of people of color.

How does safety play into the fitting aspect of that?

Joe Dotoli: Well, first of all, fit is important of course. The helmet has to stay in place for the initial contact. That's the most important moment that the helmet needs to be in place. When the head hits whatever it's going to hit first. Okay? Whether it's a standard or the ground or whatever. The moment that initial impact happens, that helmet needs to be in place.

Now, let's go from there though. So have you heard of the MIPS technology? Well, what MIPS is it provides what's called a slip plane inside the helmet, so that after that initial contact, if you're going to get a concussion from a rotational force, once the helmet starts to spin after initial contact, that MIPS liner the slippery liner inside the helmet allows the helmet to move a couple of microseconds faster than your head. And that gives your brain a chance to catch up inside your head. Okay.

Concussion happens in a number of different ways. It can happen with linear force, you know, helmet just stops, hits the ground or whatever, and then your head hits the helmet and then your brain hits the inside of your head. Well, the liner in your helmet is what allows your brain to slow down in a linear force concussion. So your helmet hits the ground, your head hits the liner, the liner collapses, your brain slows down and then does not hit the inside of your head as hard. Okay? That's how that works. So rotational force has always been more of a problem because how do you keep the brain from, you know, getting, you know, out spun inside the head basically. And that's what the MIPS technology tries to do. Create a slip plane that allows your helmet to slip a little bit before your head does.

Well in all scientific work, it's come to light that a person's hair up under the helmet creates a similar slip plane and actually is a benefit in a rotational situation, rotational force. It allows the helmet to slip slightly for the head does. It allows the helmet to turn slightly before the head does, allowing kind of the same thing as the MIPS does. Now, the MIPS is obviously more consistent because it's the exact same every time. But the hair up does a similar thing. It is a bit of a benefit, it turns out.

Now that is different from dreadlocks. I don't know the answer to that. Honestly, all I can think of is, all the football players have that kind of natural hair. Their football helmets work, so why aren't our helmets working? I don't know. Maybe we can get some information from the football world and how they make it work.

USHJA: Or different features that they may have that then could be brought into riding helmets. I think that article specifically obviously, has opened up a lot of discussion.

Joe Dotoli: Yeah, and I would say the first step would be to go to Virginia Tech and say, how do the football helmets accommodate that? And what can we do to our helmets to make it similar? That would be my answer.

And I will start that ball rolling. I had intended to call Dr. Barry Miller and ask him if he saw that article and what did they think? So we'll get on it. You know, I certainly did not realize it was a problem, and I'm not sure what can be done about it, but we ought to give it a try anyway.

USHJA: Absolutely. So the next step of research and safety that you're working towards is some research on safety vests. Why is that needed and what are you hoping to kind of find out from that research?

Joe Dotoli: Well, it's kind of the opposite of helmets, to be honest with you. We had to bang our heads against the wall to get helmets, and vests are kind of the opposite. They showed up at the thousands and we don't know anything about them. You know, it's the opposite situation. You've got literally thousands of people wearing air vests in the horse show world, and we don't know the first thing about them. There's basically no standard yet about them. So we can't do the same thing we did with helmets, where we started with the ASTM standard.

We went from there. There is no ASTM standard on vests. They have them for the hard vests, but not the air vests. So the idea is to get good information and start to figure out some of these problems. You know, for example, they make a long noise when they go off. That's because the technology came from motorcycles. Now, a motorcycle couldn't care less if they make a bang, but some horses do. A lot of people in my barn wear them. I've seen lots of them go off. I've never seen a horse react badly to it. I've had other trainers tell me that none of their horses have reacted badly, but I've had others tell me they have reacted badly. So how can we mitigate this sound? Because if there's even just one horse reacting badly, we ought to try to get the sound mitigated. Certainly, with all the sound mitigating technology there is, there should be a way that they can get that sound down.

You know, that's just one problem. Then there's the problem of the fact that we're tethered to the saddle. So if you go to the ground with your horse, the vest doesn't go off, so now you've got a vest that has a canister in it and the vest doesn't blow up. So now the canister is a problem. There's lots of parts to it that we need to find how they work. They're working the best they can. And then if they're helping, then let's find out which ones are working the best.

So the same thing as with the helmets. Find out which ones work the best, create some competition among the makers to have the best possible. You know, all I can say is I bought one for my granddaughter. I think they work, I think they help, you know, they're not the end all. There's nothing that's an end all. You know, you can't prepare for every situation, but in most situations, I think that the vest is a plus. But I would like that proven by science.

USHJA: Well, you came this far with the helmet, so I'm sure you're on the right track.

Joe Dotoli: And I honestly don't know how this all happened, to be honest. Sometimes I think, why do they keep calling me about this stuff? But anyway,

USHJA: You seem to be the right guy to call though.

Joe Dotoli: For some reason, I'm able to move the needle on this stuff and because that's the case, then I'm happy to do it because it needs to get done.

The vest thing is going to be the next big project. We call it the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab, but it's really the Virginia Tech Biomechanical Lab. It's not just helmets. They do all biomechanics and Dr. Duma is probably most famous for his work in the auto industry on airbags, so he's absolutely the right person to lead this research.

USHJA: Yeah, that seems right along the lines of the air vests.

Joe Dotoli: It is an airbag. It's a port audible airbag is exactly what it. Yeah. But you know, there's a lot of things to be studied. I mean, you know, some people say, you know, it needs to come up around the neck. Well, does it or doesn't it? Would that make it better? Would that cause injury? You don't know until you test, you know?

So all of these things have to be scientifically looked at. So we know that we're doing the right thing here, that we're, you know, that all this popularity of the vest is the right direct. I'm a believer in science. My background is in science. My degrees are in science, and I certainly don't consider myself an expert in any of these fields, but I believe in the process of if you have something that you know, you need to scientifically find out all the facts, and that's what we're trying.

USHJA: It definitely seems like we're headed there.

Joe Dotoli: I think so. I think, and like I said, the biggest difference is the people want this now. They're not fighting it, they're encouraging it, you know, it's really great. So we went to the Peter Wetherill Hunter Spectacular, you know, and we have the big gala where they raised money for USHJA Foundation and all of that.

And this, you know, the vests were going to be part of that raising. And Dr. Duma flew up from Virginia to go there with me, to say a few words and we went out on the grass with a microphone looking up at the grandstand. And you know, I talked for a couple minutes, so did Dr. Duma. We went back and sat down and they had done a couple of messages up on the jumbotron too, and back and sat and Dr. Duma said, you know, that was remarkable. I said, what's that? He said, I was looking up in the stands when, because particularly when you were talking, he said, and you know, you get a situation like that where people at a big event and they're up, you know, having dinner and some wine and whatnot. He says, you know, normally you try, you're talking, there's not a soul listening, and he said, I was looking, he said, they were all listening. He said it was really remarkable.

So the people in our industry want this stuff. They want it to be better. They want to know that it's working, all that stuff. They're a hundred percent behind this kind of research now where back in the beginning of the helmets, everybody seemed to be against it. So that's a huge progress

USHJA: In the past few years, accidents have really showed a lot of people that, even these professionals, they know what they're doing. It doesn't matter how seasoned of a horse you can get on something can still happen. I'm sure you've seen it a lot, that there's been a big pivot in the mindset of people.

Joe Dotoli: Yep. And that's been the biggest positive in the whole thing, is people now, like I said, they want this research. They want to know what we can do to make the sports safer for all of us, even though we all agree that it'll never be a hundred percent safe. It's just not the nature of it. But yeah, if the technology is out there, we would be dumb not to use it, you know? And we're not dumb. We're a lot of smart people in the sport,

So let's just like I said, let's do what we can to make it safer and then get on with what we love. That's the way I see it.

USHJA: Well, we're lucky to have you spearheading most of it.

Joe Dotoli: I'm coming close to the 50th anniversary of New England Finals where I'm going to retire. I've got two more years left on the board of directors. I'm going to retire. I think I'm going to retire from everything all at once.

USHJA: It sounds like it's well deserved.

Joe Dotoli: Like I said, as long as progress is being made and a couple of hours out of my day isn't going to, toughest thing I'm going to face all week. So push it forward is always fine with me.

And, you know, we have great people. My safety committee is tremendous. They all work hard at it, you know, it just, it takes a lot of people. It's certainly not one person. It's a movement, as we said in the sixties.

USHJA: So we always wrap up our podcast episode with something we call the Victory Gallop.

So pick one: a bay, a gray, or a chestnut.

Joe Dotoli: Have to go with the gray. I've had too many life-changing horses that were gray.

USHJA: If you had to pick the long approach oxer or the trot jump, which would you choose?

Joe Dotoli: I like the trot jump when I was riding. I feel that my best skill was making babies from the horses that came off the track.

And once we get out of the field, many, many hours of slowly trotting trot jumps to get them relaxed was something that I did for hours and loved it.

USHJA: Live a day in the life of any rider, who would you pick?

Joe Dotoli: You know, it would be too easy to say Peter. So I will say Bill Steinkraus was always my hero. Such a, a great, great rider and such a wonderful kind man and thoughtful.

USHJA: Doesn't sound like you have a lot of time on your hands to watch TV or movies, but what was the last one you watched?

Joe Dotoli: The last movie I watched was actually Where the Crawdads Sing.

USHJA: What are two things you can't get through a day at a horse show without?

Joe Dotoli: Coffee for sure. Well, I guess it would depend on whether it was a horse show that I was judging or a horse show that I was, you know, working at as a exhibitor. For judging it would be coffee and my backpack with all my tools.

USHJA: Do you have a hidden talent?

Joe Dotoli: No, I don't really play an instrument or sing or anything like that. Well, you know, I write. I've written two books. I guess that would probably be it.

USHJA: That works. I don't know if it's hidden if you've published, which I know you have.

Joe Dotoli: I wrote Peter's biography called Wylde Ride, and I wrote a book about the desegregation of the Boston school system in 1974 called Piece of Chalk.

USHJA: What is your favorite horse show?

Joe Dotoli: I would have to say that I think the most beautiful horse show and certainly my favorite to judge is Hampton Classic.

I haven't shown there for a while. It was, for us, it was always tough to show there because, you know, it involved the horses going across on the ferry and, you know, it was pretty involved. So it was always a little complicated, but always worth it. And certainly judging it or just being there as a spectator.

To me it's the most beautiful. The fact that they still have the grass rings for the hunters and the way they've landscaped it, how they've got all of those perennials that all bloom in August, right there on the horse show. I mean, it's just spectacular.

USHJA: Finally, describe your dream horse in three words.

Joe Dotoli: Balanced, brave, kind,

USHJA: Balanced. That's a judge's answer for sure.

Joe Dotoli: That's someone who's ridden one that isn't balanced sometimes. Yeah, we have some babies that we've bred at my sons-in-law’s and we have a few babies at home and I always love to watch them canter around on our fields, which are up and downhill because of course we're in New England and watching the ones that are balanced and have no problem with the different up and down part. I love to see that, you know, see how balanced they're.

USHJA: Well, that is all I have. I so appreciate you taking some time out of your day, and I know you probably had a long day at the horse show, so thank you so much.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of USHJA On Course. Read more about the importance of helmets and the new research in the march issue of In Stride at ushja.org/instride.