United States Eventing Association

The USEA Competitions, Calendar, and Rules Committee, along with the USEA Areas and the USEF Eventing Sport Committee, have been working hard to assist events affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with rescheduling. There were 259 USEA recognized events on the calendar for 2020 and of those 82 have been impacted by COVID-19 so far with 23 receiving rescheduled dates and five new events being added to the calendar.

“When an accident happens you don’t have to completely overhaul everything, but you have to calmly look back at it and say ‘what are the problems and where do we have it right?’” explains Jonathan Holling, chair of the USEA Cross-Country Safety Subcommittee. “The reality is that the officials have been doing a pretty good job, and I think that a lot of what we have been doing has been making things safer. We just need to find where we can do even better.”

The March/April issue of Eventing USA is now available. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the United States Eventing Association (USEA) was, unfortunately, unable to print and mail the March/April issue of Eventing USA, but the full magazine has been released for all current USEA members to read online.

In five months the first horse will be cantering down centerline at the 2020 Olympic Games at the Equestrian Park in Tokyo, Japan. In recent weeks there have been several announcements regarding details for the Games to catch up on and there are several important dates to put in your calendar.

“It was a down in the trenches kind of day,” said USEA Future Event Horse (FEH) co-chair Robin Walker about the final day of the USEA Educational Symposium. “It was a great value for the judges and necessity going forward.” This year’s FEH portion of the Symposium focused on judges’ training as the program works to refine the pool of judges and makes sure that every FEH horse is getting the best evaluation possible.

An enthusiastic group of USEA Young Event Horse (YEH) judges, breeders, riders, trainers, organizers, and fans started their morning in the classroom to kick off YEH day of the USEA Educational Symposium. Andreas Dibowski and Maren Engelhardt gave a presentation on analyzing the gallop using videos of Dibowski’s horses. Englehardt asked all the attendees to think about her perfect gallop and to have that in mind when watching the videos.

Yesterday Andreas Dibowski said that he was ready for the “fun stuff” and today he had the chance to share his knowledge of both show jumping and cross-country to a large audience who attended day two of the USEA Instructors’ Certification Program (ICP) Symposium. The morning started out in the ring at Barnstaple South with three groups of riders – Beginner Novice, Training, and Preliminary, and three groups of the same levels took to the cross-country in the afternoon. While the exercises and jumps got progressively harder throughout the day, the warm-ups and themes stayed the same.

The USEA Educational Symposium is a unique opportunity each winter for eventers to gather together to soak in knowledge. The first two days of the 2020 Symposium focus on the USEA Instructors’ Certification Program (ICP) with attendees learning how to be better, more effective instructors. German Olympian and world-renowned rider Andreas Dibowski is this year’s guest instructor and he spent the first day dedicated to dressage with one Advanced show jumping group to wrap-up the day. Dibowski taught the instructors to teach using demo riders and horses from Beginner Novice to Advanced of all ages, breeds, and sizes.

No It ‘Tissant, Lynn Symansky’s longtime partner was laid to rest in January at the age of 28. “Fergus” was an off-the-track Thoroughbred by Admiral’s Flag and out of Yes Tis who had 24 starts on the track as a 2 and 3-year-old, winning three times and earning $16,675.

The USEA celebrated its 60^th anniversary at the 2019 USEA Annual Meeting & Convention, and all of the attendees took home a special USEA Publication – Eventing In America. This is the second edition of Eventing in America with the first being published in 1999 to commemorate 40 years. Now, 20 years later, the USEA has once again taken a look back at its history and the memories of six decades of the sport and produced a publication that takes the readers year-by-year.