What's Behind the (Sorry) State of Eventing in Canada

Canadian Eventing has had its ups and downs over the years, but many will tell you that it’s in the absolute worst state it’s ever been right now with serious problems at every level of the sport. The good news is that the Eventing Committee is well aware of this and has developed a specific action plan to address the many issues. What remains to be seen is whether Equestrian Canada (EC) can overcome its bureaucratic tendencies to approve their plan and give them the latitude they need to make the necessary changes.

Leadership

“It’s a bizarre thing to say as chair of the Eventing Committee, but I don’t know who is leading this sport in this country,” said Nicholas Austin, who has been on Equestrian Canada’s Eventing Committee since April, 2020 and became Chair in February, 2021 when the previous Chair, Ruth Allum, resigned. “Fundamentally, our problem is a lack of leadership. EC is about process, not about leadership. It’s not strategically driven. It’s process driven.”

In fact, Austin is aware that the leader of eventing in Canada is the Discipline Manager, Fleur Tipton. EC’s governance structure has always been promoted as “volunteer driven and staff implemented.” When it was originally introduced, the concept was supposed to mean that the expert volunteers appointed by the CEO to the discipline committees would come up with the plans to guide the sports, and EC’s paid Discipline Managers would execute those plans.

Scroll to continue with content

The “staff implemented” structure was introduced in order to provide greater accountability. While the experts on the committee have many years of experience in their disciplines, they are still volunteers with full-time jobs, families and other priorities and can’t be properly held to account. The flip side of being held responsible is that staff also have veto rights. If they don’t approve of the plan they can decline to implement it, or they can alter the plan in a way not intended by the expert committee. What’s more, they can do so without collaborating with, or approval from, the expert committees that have been tasked to guide the sport. This is why it is crucial for the discipline committee and the manager to have a good working relationship, but that is not the case in eventing.

“I’ve chaired the national committee for the last six months and been surprised by the lack of communication on matters of some urgency,” explained Austin of his working relationship with the Eventing Manager. “Such little interaction makes the committee feel irrelevant and unable to serve the sport well.

“If the eventing committee is responsible for strategy, who is responsible for leadership of sport?” continued Austin. “In our committee’s Terms of Reference we are purely for strategic guidance and council. Then who the hell is leading this thing? That is at the core of this whole issue. The Eventing Manager should be a resource. If that person is supposed to be a leader, then we need a different manager. There are a million different things that need fixing and until I have a course of action that I can see myself implementing I can do nothing.”

But Austin and the Eventing Committee do have a plan; it just hasn’t been approved by EC. The group has crafted a detailed course of action to redefine Eventing in Canada that includes four key changes:

Create working groups of the Eventing Committee to complete specific tasks. There would be four such groups focused on Sport Development, Officials & Rules, High Performance, and Financial Supporters.
Take the lead on developing and executing the sport’s budget in conjunction with the Eventing Manager.
Improve the recruitment, training and advancement of officials as well as have a permanent position on the EC Rules Committee.
Create a new High Performance program that is purposeful, based upon a system, fair, transparent, and competitive on the world stage.

The group presented this plan to EC’s CEO, Meg Kreuger, who has acknowledged that there are many issues in the discipline that need to be addressed. Her response to their plan, however, was not the enthusiastic endorsement they were hoping for. Kreuger did commit to making several improvements; however, much of her response noted the need to follow the chain of command and established policies. This means that the group had to get approval for the plan from the Discipline Manager, which has not been forthcoming. Further, many felt that Kreuger’s reply didn’t adequately address the urgent plea for change, noting that many of EC’s policies are what has been hampering the sport in the first place.

While leadership remains a central issue, the repercussions are felt in all the other aspects of the sport which are all in disarray.

High Performance

James Hood became EC’s High Performance Manager in January 2020. Previously he had been in charge of Swim Canada’s High Performance program and is well-versed in navigating the Canadian government sport funding system. Many say that “sport is sport” and that knowledge of a particular sport isn’t necessary, but his lack of equestrian knowledge has led to a slow start and with a major Olympic qualification event next fall, a High Performance plan has yet to be revealed.

High Performance plans are created in quadrennial cycles to match the Olympic calendar and include strategies and policies to guide the country’s top athletes to achieve successful international performances. The program will, among other things, establish which major events are on the horizon, which combinations are most likely to be in contention, which events they should plan on doing in order to be competitive at the right time, and which metrics will be used to evaluate performances. In Kreuger’s reply to the Eventing Committee’s proposal, she noted that EC is in the process of redefining High Performance as part of its latest strategic redesign to be implemented in the last quarter of 2021. Curiously, however, Austin, who is also the Chair of Eventing High Performance, has never been consulted about this new direction.

Whatever it is, the plan can’t come soon enough. The shortened timeline in advance of the next Olympics means that next year’s Eventing World Championships will be an Olympic qualifying event and riders are already starting to plan which events to attend to secure a spot on the team. The following year it’s the Pan Am Games in Santiago, Chile, which is another Olympic qualifying event that Canada has relied on heavily in the past to qualify for the Olympics, which will held next in Paris in 2024.

“Eventers are fed up railing against EC and want clarity in the High Performance program. They want to feel that we are all going somewhere,” said Austin.

Without this vision, the riders are left to their own devices to determine their own path. The lack of oversight and accountability, however, can lead to a lack of discipline which also hampers top international level results.

Coach

The last full-time coach the eventers had was Clayton Fredericks, who left that role in 2016. David O’Connor did work part-time but resigned last fall (though riders were only advised this spring). Even elite athletes benefit from an outside eye and expert insights to help guide their training and discuss strategies. In fact, all of the top Eventing nations provide their athletes with monthly training sessions in both dressage and jumping to hone their skills. Without a coach, riders are left to develop their own plan, which may not result in Canada achieving the best result.

Grass Roots

The grass roots of any sport are critical in developing future team athletes. At the most basic level, the more participants you have in the funnel, the more riders are likely to pursue elite sport.

But it goes much further than that. More athletes mean more venues which means more opportunities for riders to learn and compete. More athletes attract more sponsors and more people willing to buy horses who help to support the elite levels who inspire the next generation.

“We are trying to play big league ball with big league teams and I don’t think we have the sponsors or riders to do it. I think we need to build it up again to change our focus,” said former High Performance Chair Rob Stevenson on his view of how to build a more successful Canadian Eventing industry. “For the money we do have, is it better spent on our riders at the top end, or would the limited funds be better at supporting officials and grassroots to build up from the bottom?

“All our dollars are focused on the top of the sport and we still can’t qualify [a team for the Olympics],” Stevenson continued. “This system isn’t working, so maybe it’s better to change focus and pay attention to the kids?”

There is precedent for this approach. Back in 2005, Tennis Canada was not achieving the international results that they wanted and created a new plan. Instead of spending money on professionals who were not achieving the desired results, they spent development dollars on the best young players. The new strategy was a success and significantly improved their international results.

To improve the grassroots, EC needs to identify a way to better support those riders with more qualified coaches, more officials, and more events to attend.

The lack of experience and qualified coaches has been regularly identified as a major stumbling block to developing more athletes. Show organizers report too many inexperienced riders touting themselves as trainers and encouraging unsafe riding habits. Thankfully, EC has started to tackle this issue. Starting in 2022, all coaches at EC-sanctioned events will need to be registered, which includes basic safety protocols, and by 2025, all coaches at all EC-sanctioned events will need to be Licensed and Certified (ex: National Coaching Certification Program).

The lack of officials to enforce the rules and oversee safe competitions is also an issue across all disciplines and has been for many years. EC has recently acknowledged this problem and is in the process of launching an Officials Crisis Initiative, though the details of what is involved are still not available.

EC will also need to address the limited number of events across Canada. It’s hard to inspire more participation if there aren’t any convenient shows for riders to attend. To compound the problem, the number of low-level events that aren’t EC-sanctioned has increased over the years. These events are able to pass considerable savings on to attendees by not paying hosting fees to EC or paying EC officials plus riders save more by not needing any provincial or national memberships to attend. While these local events offer an inexpensive alternative, there is concern that they don’t guarantee a safe environment in the same manner that an EC-sanctioned event does, nor do they contribute to the expenses of running a national federation.

“One of the biggest issues that I worry most about is the rise of the unsanctioned event because our athletes may be exposed to a level of competition that won’t prepare them,” noted Austin. “I worry about losing venues because it’s more profitable for them to run schooling shows. I worry about losing officials because they have difficulty working through EC.”

Budget & Funding

Underlying all of this is the lack of budget in terms of both available dollars and forecasted plan.

The Eventing Committee as a whole has never seen a budget from EC’s Discipline Manager. The most current hint of what the Eventing budget might be comes from EC’s 2018 Financial Statements which revealed just under $180,000 in Eventing-related expenses. Since then, EC has changed their financial reporting strategy and no longer tracks funds by sport. They also advised riders this spring that the budget (whatever it might have been) has been significantly decreased.

That amount (or less) certainly does not go very far, particularly when you are trying to tackle all of the issues noted above. Consider that the top five Eventing teams in the world each have an annual budget of $1 million to support training and managing their athletes. While it’s unlikely that Canada will ever be able to secure that level of financial support for the sport, it’s clear that a major fundraising initiative must be launched.

Making It All Work

Since it was introduced, EC’s governance structure has been a source of frustration. EC has lost board members and countless committee members who are fed up with a system that has emasculated the discipline experts.

“In my opinion, the management is sidelining the disciplines from any meaningful authority over their owns sports,” commented Terrance Millar when he resigned from the board in 2017 over the new governance structure. “It appears that the direction they are going is to run High Performance for the various sports directly from the EC office and I don’t think they have the knowledge, background, skill set, or capacity to do so.”

Though dated, Millar’s concerns remain relevant to this day. The discipline committees are comprised of industry experts who dedicate thousands of hours at no cost to EC to help guide the sport. Taking away their authority and expecting a single staff member to be able to achieve the same results has always been an unreasonable request doomed to fail.

Kreuger has pointed out that EC hired an expert on national sport organization by-laws earlier this year. The proposed new governance changes will be presented to the Voting Members at EC’s AGM at the end of September. Hopefully the new structure will find a balance between bureaucratic oversight and accomplishing real goals in a timely manner.