Important aspects of eventing have been the focus of FEI meetings held in the past few weeks
40 senior experienced Eventing judges focused on Eventing Dressage at a four-day workshop in mid-January Warendorf in Germany at which with the objective of reaching consensus on Dressage judging parameters for the discipline and later in the month, National Safety Officers and National Federation representatives from 23 countries attended an Eventing Risk Management seminar held in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne (SUI).
The Risk Management Steering Group met immediately afterwards to review the recommendations made at the NSO seminar and formulate proposals that will go forward to the Eventing Committee. The series of meetings concluded with a two-day seminar on Conformity in Eventing on 2 and 3 February, designed to streamline themes and discussions that course directors will implement in order to have consistency of information on all FEI Eventing courses.
The Eventing Risk Management seminar saw the attendance of National Safety Officers and National Federation representatives from 23 countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, Sweden, Thailand and the United States of America.
The meeting was chaired by David O’Connor, who presented key sport statistics extracted from the data collected over the past 10 years, clearly demonstrating the sport’s growth and an ongoing improvement in safety protocols as a result of the Eventing Risk Management Policy and Action Plan;
- The numbers of starters continue to grow, showing a 30% increase in the past 10 years from 14,268 starters in 2008 to 20,600 in 2017.
- The number of competitions has also increased, up 40% in the past 10 years to 690 last year. Horse falls continue to decline in relation to the percentage of starters. In the decade between 2008 and 2017, horse falls have reduced from 1.7% of starters to 1.38% last year.
Other key topics discussed during one and a half days of interactive presentations were the importance of coaching at all levels, prioritising the education of athletes on competition preparation, and the global establishment of mandatory medical return to play protocols after a fall.
The seminar also focused on the continued sharing of information and the importance of collecting quality data on numbers of starts, falls and injuries in order to continue the ongoing work on establishing trends that could lead to an adjustment of FEI policies.
The Risk Management Steering Group met immediately afterwards to review the recommendations made at the NSO seminar and formulate proposals that will go forward to the Eventing Committee. These included defining how data collection can continue to be improved in order to better understand trends; global improvement of data feedback through standardised reporting; ongoing development of both Course Designer education using a mentoring system and an athlete coaching programme.
Additionally, the Group will recommend to the Eventing Committee that every National Federation should be required to have a medical return to play rule in place and British Eventing has already implemented a new rule earlier this month along these lines
CLICK HERE for the full FEI summary from these meetings
