Equestrian sports are unavoidably interspecies and undeniably dangerous. Whilst there has been qualitative research into the human-horse relationship, and quantitative research into horse riding, injury and risk, there remains a need to understand how risk perception and experience is subjectively implicated in, through and by the human-horse relationship, and vice versa. Doing so requires reconciling animal studies with risk theory. As a high-risk interspecies sport, eventing provides an exemplar case study for critiquing, extending and reconciling posthumanism and risk theorisation. This paper draws from interviews with 21 participants of the high-risk equestrian sport of eventing to explore the mutual benefits of using `risk` as a point d`entrée for analysing human-horse relations. Findings were largely consistent with three popular theories of voluntary risk-taking: edgework, flow and sensation-seeking. However, the involvement of an animal - the horse - stimulates a critical reconsideration of internal/external `control`; identifies a role for flow as risk mitigation/safety; and suggests that edge workers in high-risk interspecies sports do not just confront edges - they cross them. This paper thus distinguishes interspecies sports as a distinct and productive field of interdisciplinary research. It proposes further mixed-methods research that is required to more fully evaluate the usefulness of existing risk theory for understanding participant experiences of high-risk interspecies sports. Volltext auch unter: https://www.researchgate.net/search.Search.html?type=publication&query=Over-riding%20concerns%3A%20Developing%20safe%20relations%20in%20the%20high-risk%20interspecies%20sport%20of%20eventing
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