Save your life - wear a riding hat.

Riding hats prevent head injuries – simple. Or so you would think…but really it was not that many years ago when it was considered normal for dressage riders never to wear hats at home. Indeed at competitions and out hunting and hacking people are still wearing hats without harnesses.

Fortunately there has been a huge movement against this. With the brilliant social media campaign launched by the BHS #hathairdontcare encouraging people to take selfies of their “hat hair” showing younger riders that fashion is not everything. Topped off by the British Dressage team at the Rio Olympics all wearing hats with harnesses, well if it is good enough for Charlotte Dujardin it’s certainly good enough for everyone else! To top it off September 17^th is International Helmet Awareness Day. Please support these ventures and encourage everyone to wear a proper fitted, up to modern safety standards helmet.

The effects of head injuries are devastating, not only for the individual but for their family and friends. My cousin had a fall out hunting on 21^st December 2014, he was wearing a hat without a harness, it had fallen off by the time the horse kicked him in the head. I spent Christmas Eve sat in the intensive care unit at Stoke hospital holding my cousin’s hand while he lay in an induced coma. My cousin who had survived three tours of Afghanistan spent two weeks in an induced coma while the swelling on his brain subsided. He regained consciousness in January 2015. We are eternally grateful to Stoke hospital and the brilliant doctors and nurses there who saved his life. But he is not the same person who he was, head injuries while they may not kill a person, can still destroy them.

It is simply not worth the risk. Wear a hat, a proper hat with a harness and save your life.

Written by Lizzie Hopkinson, marketing consultant.