It’s not over till the fat lady sings.The jumping riders are not going to take the controversial Olympic format changes lying down, whatever the vote of the FEI General Assembly last month. At the end of a sometimes heated couple of hours at Geneva show on Friday morning, the FEI offered to meet a jumpers’ […]
Lots of people must think working in the equestrian media is very glamorous. You certainly go to events in lovely places and meet your idols on a regular basis. The reality is also incredibly long hours sorting through acres of photos and posting stuff every few minutes on social media while trying to write considered, […]
It was a shame the FEI did not live-stream Monday’s final debate on the controversial Olympic format changes, held at its General Assembly in Tokyo. I don’t think, though, that anything said would have changed many voters’ minds prior to Tuesday’s landslide. The controversial three-to-a-team, no drop-score formula was always going to be approved, because […]
In my last blog, I discussed whether it’s time to introduce a more detailed rider demerit system for rule-breaches in eventing. Or indeed, any sport. This followed the latest bout of social media angst over another alleged blood-in-mouth incident, and the invidiousness of the FEI yellow warning card, which, in eventing, is used to punish […]
The FEI heads of sports meet regularly, but do they actually pool ideas? You’d never think so when comparing their sports’ respective rules.
It may have been staged three weeks ago, but unsavoury matter is still rising out of the effluence of the world endurance championships at Samorin.
It’s four years since I began following the endurance scandals in detail, and during that time I have encountered several frustrations for legal reasons: sometimes when I have heard about something truly shocking, the FEI statute of limitations, or need for any protest to be brought by an official, has saved the perpetrator from censure. […]
The UAE is still not in the best condition, the was proven at Saturday’s UAE world endurance championship (WEC) ride in Samorin, Slovakia.
When will the British eventing team win gold again? This has been niggling at me for some while and, it seems, worrying the elder statesmen of our sport, for whom it was quite a topic during Burghley. Rio was the first time since 1996 that Britain has returned from the Olympics without a team or […]
A press release from the FEI popped into my mailbox last weekend of the sort probably not expected to be widely reproduced. FEI president Ingmar de Vos celebrated the clean sheet returned from the dope-testing of 30% of all horses (though one should surely start from the premise that we don’t expect any positives – it […]
