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Another venue lost - Virginia Horse Trials

Doesn’t the VA Horse Center have a major investment in its cross-country courses? At least 2 separate XC courses on opposite sides of the road? If I am thinking of the right facility. In terms of those XC courses it was just glorious, if that is the one I visited.

You may be right. The website talks about the study, not the reality. No photos of it on the website.

The google-map photo of the address is a bunch of woodsy matter, trees/bushes. Not even a gate or a turn-in from a road.

So I do not know. Hopefully some publicity will start soon.

True. Well as mentioned by other posters above, maybe VHC will carry on eventing with other dates. It is a beautiful facility and it would be nice for eventing not to lose it.

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If you look at the aerials there’s a house, what looks like a paddock with run-in sheds, and a round pen. It looks like it shares a driveway with the neighboring house. There’s a decent amount of fields and woods behind it, but it’s impossible to tell what actually belongs with that property and what goes with the other nearby farms.

Organizer @ VHT moving his events to Tryon - at least for now, no idea if a change of Date is in the works

There is no site yet for Shenandoah Horse Park, likely that address is just for someone who is the primary contact for the effort.

“Wait said a large track of land is needed for this project, and they have their eyes on two different sites. One is two 200-acre parcels in Kearneysville, which are not yet for sale but the owners have shown interest in the product and one is one track of land which straddles West Virginia and Virginia.”

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Hi there. My husband Andy and I organize the Virginia Horse Trials. I am happy to privately answer any questions that anyone may have (as long as I am able)

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Contract law is pretty clear…adding improvements (fixtures) to a property you do not own is done at your own risk. The same is true if you are renting/leasing a business location, renting/leasing a private residence, etc. You do not own the property. Sometimes you can negotiate a decrease in the rent/lease cost…but fixtures are there to stay if the lease term is not renewed…or, if you want to take out a fixture, (I consider the water jumps as fixtures) you would be required to put the property back in its original condition. So… the Bowles can take their non-fixture jumps away with them. Why the Bowels appear to be surprised by this contract law…is a surprise in itself…Just because it is an event they are not treated as the owner of the property.

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Thanks for sharing this. Pretty much covers all questions of what’s going on.

Looking forward to hearing where VHT lands and also whether or not VHC is able to secure their own dates. If both happen, it may end up being a win win for Area 2 instead of the huge loss it initially appeared to be.

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Not sure what you are implying here. Most venues lease out the facility to organizers and show managers to run the actual competitions. The competitions themselves are a company owned by the organizer or manager, not the venue.

Andy is correct in saying that if the venue attempts to take a competition from the organizer, that is the equivalent of a hostile takeover of his company and he should be compensated fairly including all of the equipment (jumps).

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Not implying anything. Andy comments to the Chronicle spoke about their investment in the property and in the event…I have not seen the contract…but if a good lawyer drafted the contract there would be language in there regarding contract interference and avenues to address such interference.

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Hi Sharon,
My husband and I are well aware of the law and I’m not sure what part of what’s been said leads you to believe otherwise. The point Andy is making in the article is that if venues are allowed to take dates away from organizers, it will be the end of independent organizers who want to come in and invest the significant amount of many it takes to put on these events.

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It happens all the time.
I have been involved with he CDCTA HT since it was founded in the mid 1980s, and we have had to change locations at least 3 times since then, because the venues “took our dates away”. We are still running the HT.

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Janet
I went to CDCTA for the first time this month and enjoyed myself. My horse and I even won. Thank you for hosting your event. Since I am learning more all the time, can you elaborate on what you said. If I’m understanding you correctly you’re saying that 3 venues that you’ve run your show at have canceled your contract and run their own usef horse trials on your already scheduled dates? Does that mean you both ran on the same date or did you secure different dates?

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CDCTA started at Commonwealth Park. They sold off most of the land that the cross country course was on. No more HT there.

Then we were at Great Meadow, which was great while it lasted. Then they made it clear they were not interested in our HT because we only go up to Prelim, and they wanted something “World Class”. Many years later they started running HT with a different organizer and different dates.

Then we were at a farm south of Culpeper. They kicked us out because we were interfering with their cattle and hay business. (new farm manager) No more HT there.

Now we are at a farm in Berryville. We have been there 8 years and everything is going well. We built the water complex, and several other permanent jumps at our own expense. But we know that at any point we might be looking for a new location.

That is life.

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I see, I appreciate your plight and appreciate even more the tenacity to continue running and as I’ve said am incredibly grateful as I enjoyed your event. However our challenge is a little different. The facility where we run wants to kick us out and run an event on our date. If that was allowed by USEF then firstly that would make the significant financial investment we’ve made fairly useless and it would set a dangerous precedent which I fear would discourage independent organizers from stepping up and making the investment necessary to run these events.

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The VA Horse Trials have always been my favorite show, so I appreciate your dedication to keeping the show going!

Is there a reason that the date is so important? If your horse trials, now at a different venue, had a new date, do you feel that would negatively impact the attendance? I imagine competitors would build their show schedule around the calendar as it posted for next year, and would still attend.

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I’m not @grzywinskia, but the problem is not the specific weekend, though they may prefer that timing. The term “date” is being used in context to USEF. USEF licenses specific dates to organizers. The organizer “owns” that date and can do whatever they like with it; USEF will not allow another show in the same radius on the same date. So VHC would have to apply to get their own date, since they don’t currently have one.

It’s like a whole racket when it comes to USEF dates. In theory it makes sense why they do it, but it also leads to abuse of the system and big calendar drama. Not necessarily in this case, but in general.

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I was so sad to hear this news, since I just moved to VA and Lexington was the closest event, everything else being 3 or more hours away. It sounds like I may never be able to event at the Horse Center, since I’ll probably never go above Novice. There’s a small chance I’ll get my mare and myself ready to go in November though.

@OTTBs Don’t fret, read the article - The VA Horse Center is still planning to run events, as the Shenandoah Horse Trials. “We are committed to hosting horse trials at all levels, both national and international, as well as starter horse trials.”

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I just don’t know what to say in this situation. It’s very distressing and unfortunate these types of situations are happening more and more frequently.

First - I am not certain that taking business away from Virginia residents is part of the VHC’s charter. The Bowles are both residents. They are running a very sucessful event which is popular, responsive to their customers, safe and growing. This sucess didn’t happen by luck. It came about by hard work, care for the sport and investments of great time and money - probably all that they have. If anyone thinks that the VHC will be able to find another organizer that will be willing to invest probably close to a million dollars in jumps and other infrastructure and do it before next Spring in time for the next horse trials, they need to have their head examined. I know I wouldn’t trust VHC to do the right thing if I was an organizer.

The VHC had every right to renegotiate the rent. I would put forward that they were hoping for this result to happen. The Bowles apparently came to an agreement on the new rent but then were notified that their contract wouldn’t be renewed anyway. Then VHC applied to hold events on the same dates as the Bowles had for VHT. Hopefully the Bowles will prevail on keeping their dates and the new venue that has offered to host them will come to a beneficial agreement for both sides. I hope that the people that don’t agree with the way VHC has handled this situation will express it by NOT going to any of their horse trials. I think if you read what Roxanne Booth actually says, they don’t have an organizer yet and I think she will find it’s not easy. Even if they get an organizer on board now, they won’t be able to build up their jumps and infrastructure in time to offer a wide range of levels by Spring. Developing an event is a long term project, I don’t care how much money you throw at it.

I hope that the Bowles and other smaller organizers that rent land and facilities for their events will consider negotiating their contracts 3 years out…in other words, this year negotiate for 2026 and then add that to the current contract. That would give them plenty of notice (3 years) if a facility wanted to do the same thing that VHC is doing here. The good old days of people doing the right thing seem to be over. It is time to protect yourself and your investment.

I see that Roxanne Book is on the USEA Foundation Board of Trustees. Perhaps the Bowles will be fighting a loosing battle. This along with what happened to Red Hills certainly leave a bad taste in one’s mouth. Good luck to them both.

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