Red Hills Horse Trials - No More thanks to USEF

EVENTING STRATEGIC CALENDAR REVIEW TASK FORCE
Sharyn Antico, Chair
Bec Braitling*
Jonathan Elliott
Lillian Heard*
Leslie Law
Shannon Lilley*
Non-voting Advisor:
Derek di Grazia
Staff Liaison(s):
Amber Braun
Eligible Athletes indicated by *

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Fwiw, and I’ll share more later when I’m actually sitting down and can organize my thoughts, that’s not the SCTF that established this calendar. That must be a new group established to look at how to re-structure this one.

Letting this group know your feelings is, of course, a good idea, but I don’t want this group to bear the brunt of the decisions by the prior group. Some members were on both but the makeup was different.

The Original SCTF that designed the calendar consisted of Derek DiGrazia, Chairman; Max Corcoran; Kevin Keane, DVM; Shannon Lilley; Lynn Symansky; and Sharon White. Non-voting advisors were Erik Duvander, Jonathan Elliott, and Leslie Law.

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The entrants to the big time events will be few if there’s nowhere to work up through the levels.

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Sycophants and snobs.

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I wonder about the composition of this group. Out of the whole group, the only one I know that has hosted and organized events is Jonathan Elliott. That will be such a different perspective to anyone who is another professional in eventing (groom, rider, vet, course designer).

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If I had the money I’d go to one of these events like red hills and put up a huge prize money and run it unsanctioned. I wish red hills would run and then have all the top pros go there instead of the new venue.

As long as the top pros basically go where they are told USEF will always get their way.

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Pure speculation, but it appears TerraNova applied for a date already generally filled by another spot (Carolina). Without a doubt this is not a fair bid process so I’m sure they included some money with their bid. Carolina was bumped to a week earlier, and red hills left out of a 4*.

While Terranova has all the money backing behind it to be a top notch facility, there was nothing but complaints from its first FEI run in the fall.

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@Bensmom, please educate the rest of us on this process. I’m not an eventer, but I’d still like to understand more about how this all works. Sad for this outrageous outcome. I thought that events were seeing so many entries that there really wasn’t an issue with ā€œintrusionā€ ?

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@Bensmom, please know that the loss of your event hurts us competitors more than you will know. The hospitality and ā€œbig stageā€ feeling at Red Hills is unmatched by any other horse trial in this country. The courses were beautiful, the investment in improving the venue was appreciated each year. In a show calendar populated by ā€œX Venue I, II, IIIā€, Red Hills was the circled, starred, underlined event you strived to get to. It was a goal & dream for so many, and has played an important part in developing some of our country’s best horses to prepare them for big atmosphere. Red Hills was the kind of special you couldn’t find anywhere else…ESPECIALLY in Florida. The connection it built with the community was also amazing; I actually just met a local FL state congresswoman from Old Town who only knew about eventing because she was in session at Tallahasee each year when Red Hills happened. I remember my first ride there in 2003, after a disastrous Prelim show jumping round left me disheartened, I had 2 kids come up to me wanting an autograph because they saw me in breeches and a connection to ANY rider (even a loser, lol) made them feel special.

To lose THAT is absolutely heartbreaking. Thank you so much for your service to the eventing community all these years.

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Florida based riders and others ā€œsilentā€ on this loss of Red Hills…as far as I can tell…nothing from Sarah K. who helped in the design Terra Nova and put out lots of publicity on social media in its construction and first horse trial …or Kyle C. or Jon H. …or …the list goes onā€¦ā€œcricketsā€ā€¦

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Lauren Nicholson posted in facebook her disappointment and shock. Pity more don’t speak up, all the hard work was for them.

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Interesting. What were the complaints?

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She made a comment on JJ Silimans post about it just basically saying don’t blame other venues since we want those too. Not sure why it has to be those same dates though?

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It has to be those dates, because the h/j shows are already booked on the other weekends that would fit into the Eventing calendar

FWIW, after sending a pretty salty email to USEF, I got an email back from Amber Braun which (among the general doublespeak) indicated that communications regarding Red Hills are being forwarded to the task force. I’d encourage everyone to write, if only to force USEF to wade through our displeasure.

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Just general things regarding a facility not established. They basically built it from cow pastures. Everything from footing, to layout, to how the event was run. Hopefully they will continue to improve.

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Should be very interesting to hear how this is covered on The Jon and Rick Show. TerraNova has been an advertiser on their show in the past and also been featured at least once. During the recap of last year’s event, it seemed like there was some definite restraint in their negative feedback about footing, etc. Rick and Elisa in particular have always been vocal about how much they love Red Hills, so it has been surprising to not see any reaction or posts of support.

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Not to mention, Rick was based in Tallahassee for a while too.

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It’s a bit ironic to me, that a sport already suffering from the loss of land and longstanding, popular venues is seemingly so eager to jump in bed with big money real estate developers of late.

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I’m copy pasting some comments from FB so everyone can see what’s going on.

Hi guys. As part of TerraNova from when it was a field of cows, I’d like to address a few misconceptions on this thread.

First of all it’s a family owned and operated business that will not turn the massive show section into a development. There are estates on 900 separate acres, yes. That makes financial sense when little else about this incredible project does.

We had no intention of bidding for a 4 star our first year. That happened because WEC had already won the bid then backed out a few short months before the event was to run.

The family (at my urging) went to enormous expense to take on that 4 star years ahead of our original plan.

The amount of blood, sweat, tears, and money that has gone into this is massive and I do not think we do a service to anything by attacking venues trying to hold events for us.

The loss of Red Hills is horrific. I have been to almost every event there since it started, and I am absolutely heartbroken that it will no longer run.

However, blaming other venues is not helpful. We followed the process as it was outlined to us along with everyone else. That is exactly what anyone would do.

Of course we put together the best team possible. I was told to pull in who I thought would do the best job in every capacity for the family to meet and review, and Hannah and Zach are passionate riders who come from the eventing world and have been working extremely hard to bring this dream to reality.

We owe them a thank you, not to make them feel like the bad guy for trying to do something awesome for our sport.

If they had decided to stick to only creating a show jumping/dressage venue they would have saved themselves HUGE amounts of money and had a much better return on their investment.

I’m proud and honored to be a part of this team, feel free to contact me directly with any questions. 703.930.3409 Sara Kozumplik Murphy

Actually, for the 2021 and 2022 dates, that was under the old calendar process, where this was done before the bid process. That doesn’t start until 2023. And with that said, WEC was on the calendar for those dates, and TN did step in and run to fill those dates when WEC realized it would not be ready in time. As stated in our official statement, we were put in an untenable position by the National Governing Body – i.e. the USEF, with the new calendar process, not by other events. We remain baffled as to why certain events were lobbied to take on additional dates – some they had not bid for – and I also think that we will never know exactly what went on in this process. I directly asked the USEF representative the following question, in person back in March: ā€œIf this is an ā€œidealā€ calendar, and the riders don’t want it, and the organizers don’t want it, then who is it ā€œidealā€ for?!ā€ Answer? Crickets. Total crickets. The Statement put out by USEF yesterday; told our local TV station in Tallahassee that this ā€œidealā€ calendar was to address ā€œcompetition densityā€ and to provide an ideal path for the upper level riders to international competition. Again, if the ULRs aren’t happy with it, and would have filled, as they have done for years, a 4* in Week 10 on the calendar, and the competitions are satisfied (Once week 13 no longer has TN and RH in it), then why in the world do we need the calendar adjusted?! Still makes no sense, and Sara, thank you for always answering your phone and trying to help us come up with a solution. I wish we could have saved it. [Libby Fletcher Henderson]

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