Eventing Committee Meeting

The Eventing Committee met at the mythical site of many Eventing Championships and the 1960 Olympic Games in Pratoni del Vivaro outside of Rome(ITA). This meeting was held in conjunction with the second Eventing Top Officials Seminar, organised on invitation for Officials functioning in the high level 2004 Championships, representatives of regions, riders and trainers.

The Committee decided to recommend to the FEI Bureau and General Assembly in April 2004 the following important points to be amended in the Rules for Eventing for 2005:

1. Eventing should continue to consist of two categories of competitions: Three Day Event (CCIs) and One day Event (CICs).

- Three Day Events - CCIs will in future be organised according to the current rules with the difference that it can be run with or without steeplechase. All other technical matters remain as per existing rules in regard to distances speeds, order of tests, horse inspections, Officials etc.
- One Day Events - CIC to continue as per current rules, as preparatory events for the CCI.
- World Cup events will continue to run under the special regulations.

The Committee also decided to abandon the proposal of promoting an additional category of CIC 4 star as there was no real necessity with the introduction of the possibility to organize a CCI 4 star without steeplechase.

It was further recommended that for this particular change, OCs and NFs would have the possibility to request to organise the new CCI format as of 1 September 2004.

2. Qualification requirements: Qualification standards for riders and horses have been revised to make them more comprehensive taking into account comments of many NFs.

3. Cost of Officials for Events: the rules have been revised for lower level events to remove the compulsory requirement for foreign judges as well as offering the possibility to OCs to only have two Judges instead of three.

4. Age Group Eventing - progression of Young Riders to Senior Three star category of event: the committee will encourage the organisation of "under 25" category of events to cover the gap of progression of the Young riders from the two star level to three star.

5. Safety program: the Committee presented the outline results of the safety study on falls to the Top Officials Seminar (will be published also on FEI Web-site). The study is a long-term project and will need the figures of several years to produce significant data. The comparison of the 2 past year has already started to show useful and interesting figures. These figures are however dependant on the information provided by the Course Designers and Technical delegates of events, which is still not optimal.

6. Horse Inspection/Exams for CIC: will be reviewed for 2005.

7. 2005 Dressage Test: 11 new tests will be implemented as of 2005 (3 for each level and 2 for the four star). These tests have been produced by Mr Christoph Hess and Mr Christopher Bartels. Tests will now be finalized and published in the coming months.

8. Criteria for New Four star event have been finalized and will apply to all new applicants, in order to maintain this category for the best events in the world. The criteria includes requirements to organise test events, visit by an FEI delegate, minimum prizemoney etc.

Development Eventing: A parallel meeting took place in Rome with the FEI Development Department and the Eventing Development Officers (Mr Andrew Griffiths, Mrs Jennifer Millar and Mr Jos Ortelli) to plan the program for the next year in East Europe, South East Asia and South America. The efforts made in the regions were very rewarding for the overall development program.