No sporting body can have rules for every bizarre eventuality. You must be able to assume that the vast majority of participants have a modicum of common sense and integrity. Who, after all, would have thought you’d need to spell out that riders musn’t pass off one horse as being another in the middle of […]
Horses are lucky, they don’t obsess about what others think of them, but if ever a horse deserved to retire with dignity, it’s Totilas.
British show jumping has taken a big gamble on a 19-year-old senior team debutante in its last ditch bid to qualify for Rio. On Monday, the British squad for next week’s mega-critical European jumping championships in Aachen was named, and it includes Jessica Mendoza, a former pony jumping star who only started competing in senior five-star […]
I’d like to be a fly on the wall on Friday (August 7), when Rio organisers brief delegates at the Olympic test event about the “glanders” scare that they have managed to keep under wraps for months. I must underline that the OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health) and the FEI are confident in Rio’s […]
I am loathe to hark back to the good old days when print media was the only form of equestrian sports reportage. Before the internet, readers didn’t mind waiting a few days, even weeks, to read about who had won what and how. This gave journalists time to write a more considered retrospective and to […]
The 27-month FEI suspension on a virtually unknown Qatari endurance rider Nasser Khalifa NJ Al Thani received a lot of media coverage recently. There is nothing new, of course, about an endurance rider from Group 7 (Middle East) being banned for doping, but the reason it is now News with a capital N is simple: […]
To those of us locked in the debating chamber in Lausanne six weeks ago, it seemed like the end of the world was coming, as drastic changes to the Olympic formats were discussed at the FEI Sports Forum. But if you are out in the field actually doing the riding, and are not one of […]
I don’t share my compatriots’ obsession with soccer, but have been wedded all day to the BBC’s 24-hour news channel to follow the gripping developments in the FBI arrests of FIFA officials, dragged from their beds in a luxury Zurich hotel at dawn on charges of corruption. The US attorney general gave a press conference […]
It’s been interesting to read reaction on social media to the FEI’s suspension of the UAE, posted by disparate (and maybe desperate) parties around the world who make their living selling endurance horses to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It is strongly rumoured that if the suspension drags on, the UAE will simply set up an […]
The marathon debates in Lausanne earlier this week, into the remodelling of equestrian sports for our survival in the OIympic movement, were stimulating and enjoyable. But now that I have slept on it for a few nights, too much of the discussions at the FEI Sports Forum seemed like change for change’s sake. FEI technical […]
