United States Eventing Association

Established in 2004 as an eventing talent search like similar events in Europe, the United States Eventing Association (USEA) Young Event Horse (YEH) Program was designed to identify young horses that possess the talent and disposition to, with proper training, excel at the uppermost levels of the sport.

The United States Eventing Association (USEA) is thrilled to welcome back longtime supporter World Equestrian Brands as the Title Sponsor of the USEA Rider of the Year Leaderboard and a Contributing Sponsor of the 2021 USEA Intercollegiate Eventing Championships.

The USEA Intercollegiate Eventing program has steadily gained popularity since its creation in 2014. In 2016, the USEA intercollegiate national leaderboards were introduced and every December, a new set of nationally ranked riders are named.

“This is a real blood individual,” Chris Ryan first observed of this 3-year-old Thoroughbred filly. “She has a lovely big eye and ear. The eye of the horse can tell so much. Vincent O’ Brian, the legendary racehorse trainer who discovered Northern Dancer, in his biography wrote that he spends a lot of his time at the yearling sales at Kentucky, etc., studying the horse’s eye.”

“An experience of a lifetime,” Phyllis Dawson described of her time competing at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea. Dawson and her horse Albany II was the highest placed U.S. event rider and finished 10^th individually in the Seoul Olympic Games.

Within two months, the USEA Interscholastic Eventing League (IEL) has welcomed 67 teams from across the country. These teams are located in almost every USEA Area, and with the growing popularity nationwide, more teams are expected to sign up. The mission of the IEL is to bring together junior riders who are in 7^th through 12^th grade and provide a supportive community through which students can continue to pursue their riding interests.

At the risk of stating the obvious, most of us who event do so because we enjoy jumping. But most of us could stand a bit of improvement, whether in the way we ride, in the way our horse goes, or both. Additionally, most of us will at some point be faced with the task of starting a green horse or re-schooling a horse that has devel­oped problems over fences.

While 2020 has been unexpectedly challenging, the USEA Young Event Horse (YEH) program found a silver lining and had several positive outcomes and record-breaking results this past year. With high turnout in both the YEH qualifiers and The Dutta Corp. USEA YEH Championships to the extraordinary achievements of the YEH graduates, it was a good year for the YEH program.

This video features Martin Douzant of The Frame Sport Horses explaining his process of backing young horses from start to finish. The video focuses on the backing process of Daedalus WG (Doctor Wendall MF x Blumins Best) a 3-year-old Oldenburg gelding, bred by Eileen Pritchard-Bryan, owned by Will Duhring, and ridden by Meghan O’Donoghue.

Three years after the creation of the USEA Young Event Horse Program (YEH), the USEA Future Event Horse Program (FEH) was born in 2007. Sharing similar goals as YEH, the FEH program evaluates the potential of yearlings, 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, and 4-year-olds to become successful upper level event horses.