So what has British Eventing done wrong?

[Roxylola]

Eland had insurance, but have paid out of pocket themselves as they were to and fro with underwriters. Just because they insure doesn't guarantee a refund (it seems).

I planned my season on an early 80 run followed by a few 90s, my 80 abandoned, my first 90 was a mixed day - would it have gone better if we'd had an 80 under our belt? I think so which means I'm now conflicted about my next entries

I also waited until this week for my refund from eland - over 4 weeks. While Speetley wasn't on my list originally if I'd had my refund I'd probably have entered as it is I hadn't. It was on my maybe list not my definite list so I hadn't budgeted for it. If eland didn't refund I wouldn't have minded the loss of the money as its gone the day I enter, but the delay stopped me "replacing" that run

 

[ester]

Would having a later entry date not mean that events start incurring significant costs without knowing they had enough to run? Am thinking unaff pretty much always at places with most of it set up just not flagged already, compared to parkland BEs?

 

[Caol Ila]

This all sounds crazy. I don't event but have been following from the sidelines. Let me get this straight....

BE decided to lower the costs of entry fees by no longer providing venues with abandonment insurance. That means that both the venue and competitors are totally out of pocket if the event is cancelled due to weather or lack of entries.

Venues can provide their own insurance privately, but that costs them an arm and a leg. I guess making it part of the entry fees was like a national health insurance -- if everyone is in the pot, everyone hopefully pays a wee bit less.

Roxylola's post suggests that the private insurance can be slow to pay out as well and a pain the a*rse. In the comments on their post, Somerford said that the underwriters were asking them questions like, 'Have you abandoned an event due to adverse weather before?' 'Are you near a river?'

Somerford has decided not to run their event at all because abandonment insurance is too expensive, and they don't want riders to lose their entry fees if they have to cancel due to weather.

Riders are either not entering BE events because they are worried about cancellations, or they are putting off sending in their entries until the last minute, so they can assess weather/ground conditions as best they can.

Venues are cancelling events due to not having enough competitors.

The weather sucks.

How do other countries deal with this? How did BE used to?

 

[LEC]

@RachelFerd just to back up your idea about pros making entries justifiable for an event - Nunney has packed out its 100 on Friday which is running N and I as well. The 100 on Saturday which is the Novice day as well isn’t full. Last year Nunney balloted, I was one of them and a bit surprised about it as a full member last year and was not expecting it. This year they are looking for more entries.

 

[Roxylola]

@Caol Ila BE sent out a  survey to ask what members might like to see going forward, with no insurance being included as a way to keep costs down. Riders are now being told "this is what you voted for" well no, BE canvassed opinions, there was no vote re insurance
Secondly, entries have gone up substantially in fact - they have not reduced at all. Costs were clearly displayed and broken down at the point of entry at all times
Not only are insurers apparently not being helpful about paying out individual venues, at the point of abandonment when clearly the start fee should never have been paid it was not refunded immediately which in my opinion it should have been I waited over a month to get mine as part of my overall refund.
I feel so sorry for venues acting in good faith with insurance and struggling. We weren't asked to vote at all, BE in my opinion wanted to scrap the costs to them. They'd have been able to offer much more efficient insurance as an organisation. It could even be something you choose to participate in with your membership subs rather than at the point of entry. I think there were better options than the survey offered but they went with what cut their costs. I'm disappointed I talked myself in to supporting them and running affiliated this year as they don't seem to be offering much support to members or venues at all

 

[ycbm]

How do other countries deal with this? How did BE used to?

Part of the answer to that was that BE ran in ground that was deep with mud and in ground baked hard like concrete and I have run on both.

What changed was, I think, two things. Venues increasingly were commercial sites not private estates, with limited grounds which they simply couldn't afford to have poached up by the parking. It's not generally the course that's the problem in the wet, it's the lorries and trailer rigs tearing up the ground to get on and off the parking.

Secondly, health and safety/insurance costs and participants with an increasing willingness to blame/sue if there are accidents, coupled with increasingly technical courses (we now have corners and skinnies at 80cm, for example) which can make poor ground more dangerous.

The affiliated sport seems to be in a doom loop at the moment. It's such a shame.

 

[ester]

re other countries I do recall another hhoer based in France posting a video of dressage in what looked like a ploughed field…

 

[ester]

Ok not France . Lord knows why I remember that post

First event, Overpelt, lessons learnt!

By the end of this report (or possibly just after the dressage video!) you will understand why we pay 10 euros entry fees for these events whilst you lot pay £70+! Lesson 1: When doing dressage in a ploughed field use your horse's Clydesdale heritage to your advantage...

forums.horseandhound.co.uk

 

[Ambers Echo]

@Caol Ila BE sent out a  survey to ask what members might like to see going forward, with no insurance being included as a way to keep costs down. Riders are now being told "this is what you voted for" well no, BE canvassed opinions, there was no vote re insurance
Secondly, entries have gone up substantially in fact - they have not reduced at all. Costs were clearly displayed and broken down at the point of entry at all times
Not only are insurers apparently not being helpful about paying out individual venues, at the point of abandonment when clearly the start fee should never have been paid it was not refunded immediately which in my opinion it should have been I waited over a month to get mine as part of my overall refund.
I feel so sorry for venues acting in good faith with insurance and struggling. We weren't asked to vote at all, BE in my opinion wanted to scrap the costs to them. They'd have been able to offer much more efficient insurance as an organisation. It could even be something you choose to participate in with your membership subs rather than at the point of entry. I think there were better options than the survey offered but they went with what cut their costs. I'm disappointed I talked myself in to supporting them and running affiliated this year as they don't seem to be offering much support to members or venues at all

Yes all this.

Plus even if a majority of those who participated in the survey did support abandonemnt insurance being scrapped, this does not take into account human nature/psychology. Nor the different needs of different riders. Theoretically accepting full loss of your £100+ is one thing. Actually seeing it go feels different.

Those running multiple times would end up better off overall, even with 1 loss, and probably opted to scrap it. Those who want to just give BE a go would be more likely to keep it. And many people never even knew there was a debate about it and have been horrified to realise that events don't get refunded. But all those people lost it.

Plus the degree of distress caused by the 'wrong answer' is totally unbalanced. Those who wanted it scrapped would probably still be more or less ok with stumping up for it as it does not make that much difference. Whereas those who wanted it to stay, and those oblivious to the debate, are utterly appalled at losing all their money.

It was always an insane idea to get rid of it. Regardless of whether I - personally - would want it or not.

 

[Tiddlypom]

Not a ploughed field, but good conditions for seagulls . I was writing for the dressage at the BE90 regional finals at Kelsall in Sept 2017, this was my arena. It was the parking for all the lorries on grass that was the main concern, this was before Kelsall's facility upgrade. We bossed it with a 4x4 and trailer when bringing my homebred to compete two days before.



Is the BE dressage on a surface there now? The SJ is on a surface, the old grass SJ arena was on a slope and did get very cut up.

Parkland BE events can't compete with the purpose built centres for infrastructure.

 

[Roxylola]

@Tiddlypom dressage is still in the field but sj is usually in the outdoor so on a surface at kelsall

 

[palo1]

It is SO localised and they kept saying it's fine here etc, yet I was looking at their nearest station reading know it was not. The readings from one station 2 miles away can be totally different though. I went down in the end as I wasn't on until 1.30 and decided to see what the air quality was by the time I'd got there and it was well under the 150 so I was happy.

But the horses that ran in the morning first thing, that was way over

I was pretty shocked tbh!

Glad to hear it was ok but that sounds like a difficult situation for competitors that either can't or don't want to take a punt on improving conditions. I would be horrified at the thought of really poor air quality having to be a factor in a day to day competing situation (not that I am competing at all atm lol). Really interesting to hear about US Eventing generally though.

 

[RachelFerd]

Sooo... as I've said - I was in favour of keeping abandonment insurance and made my views clear in the survey and also by email to BE. But accept that the majority view was not the same as mine. I think the fundamental reason why BE were keen to scrap is that the abandonment insurance model was unique to BE and was not something that existed in the BD/BS space - or in any space. It was I think in part driven by the fact that unaffiliated events didn't have abandonment insurance and the org was trying to compete with their entry fees. [and, of course, the way that unaffiliated often worked was that a venue would run their higher-cancellation risk event early in the season and then run unaffiliated events later in the spring/summer when they'd already paid for the full set up of the venue and they had much less chance of cancelling...]

My feeling was that BE and eventing were a bit unique in their need to protect against abandonment because of the huge set-up costs and the unique one-off venues, and so the weird centrally led abandonment policy did make sense on balance.

The only answer to doing eventing entries is to have a credit card with a decent limit on it, which then means you don't have to worry so much about waiting for one refund to come in before entering the next thing. Not ideal, but its my "solution" to the really annoying problem.

@LEC that's really interesting re. Nunney - I think it shows the big shift from grassroots propping up the sport for the pros to the pros now having to try to prop up their own sport with running youngsters - and not being able to do so because the mass participation volume isn't there.

The facts remain that eventing is a niche sport with a limited number of people who will ever want to take part in it. There will only ever be enough willing participants to support a certain number of events around the country on any given weekend, and the current situation with unaffiliated events and affiliated events going head to head all the time for those entries on any given weekend will keep decimating the entry lists. Particularly in an economic environment where people are having to reduce their spending and enter less events overall, or try and reduce their fuel costs by staying local.

Edited to add a couple of further thoughts:

1. as i posted higher up this chain - whether or not the abandonment insurance was paid for by events or by BE, next year will be a horrendous problem because no insurer is going to want to insure at sensible prices because of the year we've just had - so we're probably stuffed no matter what

2. Speetley was going to suffer for entries in the 'new normal' of there being more full time pros running and a smaller base of participants, because it is the same weekend as Bramham - so majority of top riders have horses running at Bramham. And the keenest of BE80 competitiors will also be there doing the BE80 champs. For anyone in the North of England with horses also running at Nov or Intermediate, they've had the option of going up to Hopetoun for the full range of classes in one trip. And any of the pros that are in central England and not at Bramham can run their youngsters at Aston's three phase training.

[There are few significant benefits for pros to be running youngsters in affiliated competition rather than just doing training events at 90/100 level, because other than for 5yos, there are no qualification opportunities that come out of these runs and no specific points/recognition to be had]

 

[Gamebird]

Ok not France . Lord knows why I remember that post

First event, Overpelt, lessons learnt!

By the end of this report (or possibly just after the dressage video!) you will understand why we pay 10 euros entry fees for these events whilst you lot pay £70+! Lesson 1: When doing dressage in a ploughed field use your horse's Clydesdale heritage to your advantage...

forums.horseandhound.co.uk

That combination went on to go 5* (back in the day when we had some top level people on HHO!), so the ploughed field did them no harm!

 

[ester]

I thought someone would know them

Funnily enough when you search ploughed field on here you do get quite a lot of eventing dressage mentions

 

[conniegirl]

Different i know but i have done a ridden showing class in a litteral ploughed field. It was ploughed by the forgetful farmer 2 days before the show!

 

[Orangehorse]

There was some comment after Badminton that they should consider putting in an arena!

 

[follysienna]

It must be incredibly frustrating for those wanting to progress. Not sure what the answer is though. I simply don’t understand why entries are low when so many have been cancelled?

Entries are low across all disciplines unfortunately. Showing shows being cancelled too due to lack of entries.

 

[doodle]

I do BD and there is no lack of entries. My local place do 3 full days a month and still have a wait list. Another local have to close entries early as it fills up and another have 2 full days with 2 arenas running.

 

[Old school]

I do BD and there is no lack of entries. My local place do 3 full days a month and still have a wait list. Another local have to close entries early as it fills up and another have 2 full days with 2 arenas running.

Funnily enough, same here in Ire. It seems to be back in the popular space. Plus great work being done to promote participation of all types/breeds of horse and all rider levels. Very comfortable environment. Eventing seems Pros and then everyone else as an ‘also ran’. SJ - have no words. The amount of tack and gear that permeates that discipline is mind boggling.

 

[RachelFerd]

I do BD and there is no lack of entries. My local place do 3 full days a month and still have a wait list. Another local have to close entries early as it fills up and another have 2 full days with 2 arenas running.

Some fairly empty shows around here BD - some of the more fancy venues are still getting big numbers.

 

[doodle]

This is Scotland so maybe different. I no longer have anything to do with BE (thankfully) but entries are always full and it’s the lower levels that are the busiest.

 

[Michen]

Glad to hear it was ok but that sounds like a difficult situation for competitors that either can't or don't want to take a punt on improving conditions. I would be horrified at the thought of really poor air quality having to be a factor in a day to day competing situation (not that I am competing at all atm lol). Really interesting to hear about US Eventing generally though.

Yep and many people wouldn’t have even thought about it as an issue. It was bizarre. It was only 30 min from me so easy to see how the conditions changed but plenty of people coming in from out of state.

USA eventing is about 25% as “professional” as UK eventing, at the same level it was fun though and had a much more low key cheerful vibe about it which I liked.

 

[Michen]

No abandonment insurance over here. I’d have lost my 275 dollar entry. I lost a $100 dollar one the other day.

I guess it’s just always been that way here, I dunno.

The other thing that’s crazy is that even at a low level a lot of these events are over 3 days. So it’s $275 plus $195 for stabling! I have zero interest in spending three days at an event

 

[Caol Ila]

No abandonment insurance over here. I’d have lost my 275 dollar entry. I lost a $100 dollar one the other day.

I guess it’s just always been that way here, I dunno.

The other thing that’s crazy is that even at a low level a lot of these events are over 3 days. So it’s $275 plus $195 for stabling! I have zero interest in spending three days at an event

I guess people are just used to that and suck it?

I never evented; just did dressage and those rarely get cancelled. I think there would have to be a wildfire looming or something for them to do that.

 

[Ambers Echo]

Yay they have replaced Speetley with Epworth. Though why they are confident Epworth will be viable, when it is in just over 2 weeks and currently has zero entries, is another matter! At least the Speetley refund came through quickly. Hopefully someone is underwriting it because if they announce they are running now, and then cancel in aboit a week, that will be far more annoying than not running at all!

 

[RachelFerd]

Yay they have replaced Speetley with Epworth. Though why they are confident Epworth will be viable, when it is in just over 2 weeks and currently has zero entries, is another matter! At least the Speetley refund came through quickly. Hopefully someone is underwriting it because if they announce they are running now, and then cancel in aboit a week, that will be far more annoying than not running at all!

I imagine set-up cost is less because Epworth has already run one BE event and lots of training events this year - so courses are ready to go. They've got great well draining ground - similar to some of the east anglian fenland type events (Little Downham, Isleham, etc.) - which seems to be able to handle all sorts of weather conditions. I like the tracks there and have made the trip across a few times. Would recommend - not a big atmospheric place, but good one for youngsters or stepping up a level.

 

[Old school]

For anyone interested, Millstreet Horse Trials are available to watch FOC on their site. Caveat: only on small screen. For some of it when you enlarge screen it pushes you to FEI tv and there is a charge. Be sure to have your glasses to hand! Also see entry is free. Love Munster Region of Eventing Ire. They just get it right. Well done.

 

[ester]

Goring cancelled in September https://news.britisheventing.com/ev...S_1_Sp45vz_-83_efytZG2n72ZopyKhM-iAG85MmjeYys

 

[DressageCob]

Llanymynech now cancelled for august too

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0x8BeuN6Ja7AcS6tGWVx5qtLSaNpq1twqm1ErxPvgvdUiWQgV3wzMEfD3eME1igYAl&id=100040411515953