Just to clarify, it is the USEA, not the USEF, that generally provides the course designer education in Eventing. USEF just handles the licensing side of it.
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Here in Area VIII I havenāt seen much interest in Training at unrecognized shows. Even when itās a unrecognized show at a place with recognized shows so the courses are the same. I think people at Training and above want to save their horseās legs for āwhere it countsā itās why while I thought running Red Hills as unrecognized to stick it to the man was appealing, but unrealistic as I didnāt think theyād get entries.
The people that run Training and above stick to recognized shows, although they might dip into unrecognized at BN and N with a greener horse.
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Yes and as great as schooling shows are, the judging can be not great, the courses can be sketchy, not anyone to make sure horses arenāt being drugged etc. That is one factor for me when competing. Plus if we take all the money away from sanctioned events, it hurts our recognized eventing circuit in the long run, although in this case that might not be the worst thing lol
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Iām not active in the organization ā¦ but depending on how the organization is set up, wouldnāt there be a requirement of financial transparency to the members?
Iāve never looked for it but wondering if they publish annual financials somewhere.
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I join/renew to be able to ride in the competitions, in the years that Iām competing. I care about the sport itself, but have always had a lot of skepticism about the particular organization that happens to run it.
Other than that, I have asked the same question since I started eventing - why join such a problematic organization?
Sometimes friends say that I should renew even if not competing āto support the organizationā. But I donāt support the organization. I think the organization is broken. And now it seems to be more broken than ever.
But there are some very nice unrecognized horse trials and local-ish organizations these days, and less and less need to get involved with the USEA.
I support the idea of a national eventing organization to keep consistent standards for the levels, for rules and for officialdom, across different areas of the country. One that is not associated with the USEF.
Itās not only financially viable, many organizers see it as financially preferable. I know of several horse trials that run annual USEA events solely to āprove the courseā, to show their facility and their horse trials are up to standard. So for them the recognized is solely to help fill the several unrecognized they also run.
They organizers say it is very hard to make money on recognized events because of the USEA (they do not have large UL divisions).
They make their money on the unrecognized horse trials, not the recognized.
I have thought this since I started paying attention to the USEA in the early 2000ās.
They tried to outsource being nice to the lower levels with the national āchampionshipsā, which were a separate organization. Donāt have the time to go into how that has turned out.
There are many already in existence, for many decades.
They donāt get press / media coverage outside of their areas. That would be why you arenāt aware of the huge amount of unrecognized activity in the U.S. In some states most of the horse trials are unrecognized. Horse trials, one & two days, huge emphasis on the lower levels.
Where I am there are families and ammys who compete only in the unrecognized circuits. They have end-of-year awards banquets, prizes, fund-raisers, everything like the nationals, just on smaller scale. They pay no attention to the ULās, the Olympics, the USEA, are barely aware of the USEF.
Where I am the unrecognized weekend warriors have trainers who focus on this level, they are locals teaching/riding locally. It seems that a pro rider who wants to seriously emphasize the national-level recognized ULās may find it hard to time manage much attention on the unrecognized, so a barn tends to focus on one side or the other.
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Or some are like me. Been with AHSA, now USEF and am tired of the organization for all of the reasons mentioned above in the thread. I was dedicated in my junior and ammy days but lost my loyalty - they donāt deserve it. Thankfully Iām competing in eventing at a low level so my joining isnāt needed.
Does eventing allow you to pay a āone time feeā like the H/J so you donāt have to join? Just curious.
Btw- supporting local circuits and barns and having a blast.
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If youāre competing below Prelim, you donāt need to be a member of USEF, only USEA.
Prelim and up, you have to be a member.
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Yes. USEF is a 501c3 nonprofit and is required to file an annual 990 (tax document), which is public. The most recent available 990 is for the 2021 show year (12/20-11/21) and is available on their website. They have $38M in assets, more than $12M of that is liquid, and turned a net income of $6.6M last year.
Itās possible that eventing as a discipline loses money ā that level of detail is not in the filing ā but USEF on the whole looks fine.
Somewhat off-topic, but @Texarkana, I would be fascinated to know if SBCās tax filings indicated financial distress in the years leading up to the near-shutdown.
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Thanks for answering that. I wasnāt trying to start scuttlebutt, but the word āsustainabilityā is definitely a trigger for me these days!
But to answer you question about SBC, no, there wasnāt much to indicate distress. Thatās why it was such an utter shock. In retrospect, there were some red flags we should have seen, but they were comparable with what just about every small educational institution in the US was facing post-2008. They still had an endowment of $84+ million. In the suit that followed, a forensic accountant actually determined the colleges finances were sustainable and on a five year trend of improvement despite the boardās claim that the financial situation was hopeless.
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It was recently changed to Modified for USEF membership.
Here is how Jon and Rick viewed the issue ( fast forward to around the 9 minute mark). I was a little disappointed about what they had to say
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So according to the video Rick said they didnāt put in their bid right because they bid on a date that wasnāt available so they were rejected and he blames the board of Red Hills and they made the wrong decisions and were misinformed and just āletā the event stop.
Jon said the board created protections because there arenāt enough weekends for all the competitions and it was an impossible task to keep Red Hills happy and he felt the calendar makes sense.
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I do not take Jon and Rick at face valueā¦Jon and Rick do NOT always have/give the most accurate informationā¦they do NOT seem to do much research on an issueā¦even when they know it is a topic that they will be discussing on their showā¦or a topic that might come upā¦they seem to just wingitā¦for exampleā¦they gave incorrect info on the world champs dressage test/cross country/stadium heightsā¦it is a simple thing to do your research before you give out an opinion.,the dimensions are easy to findā¦and part of that show was about the world champsā¦
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Honestly, I found. It a little off putting how they put all the blame on the organizers and then implied people commenting on social media didnāt have all the information about what was going. The reality is if the powers that be wanted to keep Red Hill they would have worked with the organizers to change the format of the event. Also if you have additional information give it, donāt imply that there is something else going if you canāt talk about what it might be.
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This is true. I really enjoy Jon, not a fan at all of Rick, but they do routinely talk about horses and riders and give wrong information. Like, all the time. Wrong history of results, where horses came from, who rode them, etc. They donāt seem to bother to fact check.
When listening to the Equiratings Eventing Pod or Horse and Hound, or others they always research before or look it up if unsure.
Jon is on a lot of boards with USEF or USEA so might have something to do with it.
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LOL The date wasnāt available because they gave it to TerraNova lol
Also his solution is for Red Hills to spend money and build a 1* instead of a 4*? ok
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Of course they did. There are probably a fair number of people who previously had no plans to go above Training that now are interested in doing Modified ā¦ gotta get that sweet membership money wherever they can!
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From what Iāve read, USEF had already decided that there shouldnāt be an upper level event the weekend Red Hills is normally held, based on their arbitrary āidealā calendar for what is needed to prepare for 5 stars and championships. The alternative was for Red Hills to try to grab a date out from under one of the other events on a different weekend. They bid on their usual weekend instead of doing that and got denied because it didnāt fit into the āidealā calendar.
Iām still not sure why the USEF gets to decide what weekends people have their prep runs, though. If Red Hills had no trouble getting competitors, clearly there are plenty of upper level riders who thought the timing was fine. Does USEF really think the reason we canāt beat the Europeans and Aussies/NZ is because weāre doing our prep runs a week too early or late? Or are they just trying to protect the new darling events that the big shiny new venues are starting up?
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Iām with you.
I get that you donāt want back to back Advanced/FEI events in the same state, because one or both of them may suffer from lack of entries. But what makes Europe (GBR) so much better is they DO have more options.
I dont care what date it isā¦ALL upper level horses could benefit from Red Hillās terrain and atmosphere. It is ridiculously short sighted to design a calendar to prepare 5 or 6 horses for Olympics/WEG at the expense of 200 upcoming prelim, intermediate & advanced horses/ridersā¦potential team members 2-5 years down the road.
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In a nutshell.
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