Pippa Funnell, winner of the 2019 Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials
Athletes who had qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games will keep their places for the 2021 event, to be held at a date expected to be announced by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) sometime in the next three weeks
The IOC has disclosed that 57 per cent of the 11,000 athletes had qualified for Tokyo 2020 prior to the postponement and, although there are concerns regarding the ongoing qualification for some sports, equestrian is one of the few that have completed qualification for all National Federation allocations
The FEI is now in the process of creating a series of discipline-specific task forces to evaluate the impact on the FEI Calendar of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in multiple event cancellations and the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games until 2021.
The FEI Board approved the creation of the task forces during its monthly teleconference on 24th March; the eight task forces, each of which will focus on a single discipline, will remain in place until any further decision by the Board.
The individual task forces, which will also include the Chair of the relevant Technical Committee, a representative of the Athletes and the FEI Sports Director of the specific discipline, will review all FEI Calendar related issues caused by the Covid-19 virus and make recommendations to the FEI on ways to address them.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is expected to make a decision on the dates that the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games will be held within the next three weeks
