I just got an email that Great Meadows International has been canceled.
Not cancelled. Will not be held at Great Meadow. The OC is working on an alternative venue,
Unfortunately a 4* in august most anywhere on the east coast is going to be next to impossible to get good footing.
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From the email:
“As GMI organizers for the past 8 years, we have made the difficult decision not to run the August event at the Great Meadow Foundation in 2024.
The last two years have been a struggle with the date in late August.
Although we originally were able to control the footing on our tracks, recent events have made that impossible.
Although we attempted to move our date, this date change was not granted for 2024.
We have also attempted to work with the landowner on improvements to the facility to allow irrigation of the course, but those will also not be possible for 2024.”
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Only a 1* may be held a different venue per the email.
Apparently it’s not just the ground, but possibly issues within GM’s cooperation of running the event. Possibly some friction between the OC and GM, hopefully it can be resolved.
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It sounds like they’re hoping it will be back in 2025. I hope so too, but I have my doubts with the way things have gone with eventing venues in recent years …
Or maybe it will come back as an additional date at one of the venues that already holds multiple other upper level events each year.
COTH article on this
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Interesting article! Anyone else think these quotes from DOC are pretty flippant about a genuinely scary drought?
I competed at Old Tavern in Oct for the third year in a row, and thankfully the footing was good due to recent rain, but the ponds at the back of the XC course were just holes in the ground with a few inches of water—nothing like I’ve seen them before. It was shocking. If those are the ponds where the irrigation water comes from, and they still looked like that in Oct, I can see how it just wasn’t feasible…
I’m not sure there’s truly a “rainy season” around here anymore. It’s more like weeks of no rain and then a sudden deluge of 2” that all washes away. Sept/Oct are often quite dry, in addition to July/Aug. Heck, it’s December now and Drought.gov still shows that area of VA in moderate/severe drought! I’m not sure we should be dumping water on the ground during a record-breaking drought so people (like me, admittedly) can gallop their luxury sport pets over logs. I generally give my horse a couple months without events in the summer because of the heat and hot ground. Maybe it’s okay for the rhythms of outdoor sport to be dictated by nature?
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I do wonder at what point we will need to make adjustments to the sport to correct for climate change. At some point it’s just no longer going to be feasible to run xc in July or August in this area (and June and September are not always great either.)
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This last year’s drought was terrible in Virginia, for sure.
But… it’s a statistical anomaly and I am not sure there is a basis to conclude this is a “new normal.”
I think back to 5 years prior… 2018. Much of Virginia was flooded and we broke many 100 year records for rainfall and flooding. Clearly that was a statistical anomaly as well.
I think the late August date is a regular challenge, however, if they don’t have the ability to mitigate the potential for hard ground. And hard ground in Virginia in August is not a statistical anomaly. So there’s that.
Oh well. Hopefully they come up with a new plan, and in 2025 the event can resume.
I’ve lived in Virginia for over 40 years and it has NEVER made sense to run XC in July and August.
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