After a break of two years from riding, due to University and work commitments, a few months ago I intended to get back on the horses. I took one look at my ten-year-old, much loved jockey skull, first of the PAS015s, and thought 'new hat for safety'. I scoured the horsey online stores and decided that a Champion Ventair deluxe jockey skull looked like one of the best new hats on the market, with a healthy price tag to prove it. I located my local stockist and went to have one professionally fitted. Disaster! The hat had an extremely low profile and simply didn't come far enough down my forehead to be a safe fit - and I have a shallow head. The hat fitter confessed that the hat safely fitted very few people and that it was, in her opinion as a hat fitter of many years' experience, very badly designed. She proceeded to fit me with a fantastic new jockey skull, also Champion, but a safe fit. I have since studied the fit of many jockey hats in Your Horse magazine and was shocked to see that on the cover of one issue, a rider wearing what looked to be the Champion Ventair - her whole forehead was exposed - the expensive piece of safety equipment she had bought to protect her head wasn't doing a very good job at all. I would urge all potential hat-purchasers to have their helmets fitted by qualified professionals and to ensure that the latest, expensive, trendy bit of safety kit is in fact doing it's job of protecting them! A very shocking and educational experience!
(Written by: sirendipity)