Maybe this year, but those of us elsewhere in the US have been complaining about the unfairness of this for years.
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Well not really, unfortunately, in the case of Vegas. (It would be handily down the road!) World Cup doesnât require as many rings or as much stabling.
However, I do think therre are other venues in the West that could cope with a bit of planning and flexibility (Westworld, the Santa Fe venue, and there must be somewhere in CA?)
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Unfortuntately, GIHP is owned by a local municipality with little interest in spending money to upgrade the infrastructure so ârich people can play with horsesâ (an oft-quoted comment). Although GIHP has made some improvements to footing in recent years, there have been a lot of comments that it still isnât up to snuff when compared to other facilities such as WEC, etc. It also has only one covered arena and there are always concerns about the impact of serious weather events.
And to my knowledge, there isnât another suitable facility outside of FL that is within striking distance of a GMO willing to do the hard work of organizing and hosting RCs - not to mention assuming the financial risk. Sucks for the GMO that is losing its biggest money maker, and it sucks for competitors who canât easily get to Florida (or afford it!), but it is what it is. Unless and until the city of Conyers decides to make necessary upgrades, GIHP will continue its decline into the second-tier rank of horse show facilities, esp. amongst folks who arenât willing to jeopardize their âhigh-five and six figureâ horses on iffy footing.
And I am sure the GMO in question has made its position clear to the RD.
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This is the same BS that kept the Virginia Horse Center from receiving investment form the local townies. The facility was funded mainly by the state, then operated and decapitalized for 30-40 years. It got to a point where they were on the verge of not being able to pay their bills. Then they got new management and a new board who were business savy.
They did a marketing survey on how much money the people attending shows brought into the town businesses in hotels, restaurants and other services. Apparently the results were eye opening. The town and county passed a bill to add a âtaxââ to hotels and restaurants. This allowed capital upgrades to the facility paid for by the people who used the facilityâŠthe âout of town horse people.
I donât have time to find the links, but I am sure the story is out there in Googleland.
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The WOrld Cup uses ONE arena.
I assure all of you that this is discussed EVERY YEAR.
Please send suggestions to your RD.
And I am done saying that.
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GDCTA does a great job in Georgia.
Regionals when held in Florida were NOT organized by a GMO, but rather by Wellington Classic Dressage, a private company. When it was here in Ocala STRIDE helped out with some volunteers this year, and we had a tent in the vendor village, but management was WCD.
Next year, WEC is organizing, not a GMO.
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Up in Region 8, we had a similar shift recently. NEDA ran our regionals until COVID. Now it is professionally managed.
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I volunteered at the NEDA Fall Festival a couple of times. The free shared hotel room was a big draw. And the year that my insulin pump failed on me, and I had to leave early, they were so nice about it. Canât imagine working for HITS or whatever would be nearly as enjoyable.
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Janet Foy asked on her Facebook page why the entries to the Nationals were so low this year. Tons of answers - mainly expenses, bad weather and difficult entry requirements. Worth a browsing through the answers.
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You canât see it unless youâre her FB friend.
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After a couple of years of rain and cold during Nationals, I know several people who wonât go back.
Problem is if they move it to earlier in the fall, that moves up our regionals more towards the peak of hurricane season, so weâll either be hot as hell or evacuating. And because of the heat, many people cut back their riding for the summer, so horses wonât be fit for early fall.
And of course many areas (where people donât leave for Florida) do the opposite, cutting back in the winter, and having to re-fit in the spring.
Hard to find a time and a place to suit everyone.
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What about somewhere like WEC Ohio, not too far from the horse park as far as location but lots of temp controlled indoor arenas?
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NEDA relies heavily on volunteers to run the shows. Itâs very hard to get volunteers in this area. The spring show was difficult to run because of the lack of volunteers. Even board members are hard to get these days.
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I was reading the âget creativeâ thread over at the Hunter/Jumper forum. Itâs based on an article on COTH. One of the responses mentioned a pipeline at the bottomâŠwe are really lacking that pipeline in dressage.
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Yeah, I was talking about this with my coach yesterday. We have the elite and pre-elite program, but where are the kids? Where are the pony riders? The JR/YR entries are sparse at shows. You have to be the child of affluent parents or have a coach that can wrangle you a sponsorship to make it to NAYC, and the teams wereâŠsmall this year.
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I agree it sounds like a BS comment to horse folks, but I also understand the municipalityâs concern about the costs it incurs for maintenance and improvement of the facility. I also understand that there are surveys and cost-benefit analyses done that consider the $$$$ brought in by GIHP visitors who utilize the area hotels, restaurants, etc.
There is a more discussion going on behind the scenes, including âargumentsâ about which discipline should be catered to vis-Ă -vis footing decisions, etc., so it will be interesting to see how things shake out, esp. in this era of rising costs.
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But this wasnât because NEDA didnât want to do it any more, from what I heard. I was told that they bid for Regionals as usual and it went to someone else. (I donât pretend to know details of the process, just heard from someone in or near the know.)
Grey
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Perhaps the GHP people should talk to the Virginia people on how they managed to turn things around at VHC. Below is a newspaper article describing the sad state of affairs at VHC.
The horse center was in such dire condition before the management overhaul that had it been a prized and beloved show horse, theyâd have been talking gravely about putting it down.
snip
One publicity wag had dubbed the horse center the âcrown jewel of the $1.2 billion Virginia equestrian industry.â To save it required an all-star turnaround team.The task involved patching up relationships that never should have been broken, soothing big-dollar patrons who dearly wanted to believe in eternal hoofbeats on Virginia 39 and not some million-dollar pig in a poke, separating swiftly from COVID-19 and finding imaginative new markets.
snip
Governed by two boards, one appointed by the governor and the other essentially a fundraising arm, operations were as smooth as a ride aboard an American saddlebred at first.Then stuff started to break.
The horse center, a state agency, was operating under an original understanding that the commonwealth would manage the debt service on the $4.5 million construction bond while private fundraising would handle operations. That worked until it didnât.
Through the late â80s and into the next decade, routine maintenance expenses mounted that private fundraising could not cover.
snip
It was a slow bleed, the kind you might not notice until you end up in the emergency room.âThere was no problem for operations to work there as long as the debt service was covered and the facility was still relatively new,â Oare said. âWhen the expensive things started to fall apart â you know, when you start talking about roofs and plumbing and those kinds of things â now youâre not talking thousands of dollars but hundreds of thousands.â
In many a catastrophe, the death spiral wasnât spotted or was ignored early when something could have been done.
snip
By the turn of the 21st century, lawmakers in Richmond smelled a loser. Not one dime was voted for the horse center during the 2000 session. Up until then, all debt service â $1 million a year â had been covered by the state according to the original management agreement.Unable to meet the debt, horse center management, headed by first executive director Bob Reel, refinanced the loan and assumed additional debt for land purchases and new construction.
snip
Cowering in the shadow of $11.4 million in debt, horse center officials in early 2014 again petitioned for public help.One way the center dodged an executionerâs ax over the years was by leveraging local occupancy tax revenue to pay the mortgage. That business-saving bounty was reaped from city and county hotel patrons.
Local legislators led by the late Republican Ronnie Campbell had successfully wrangled an increase in the tax from 4% to 6%, predicted to fuel debt service by an added $350,000 to $400,000 annually.
And it still wasnât enough.
snip
âThese people, one after another, came up to me and were utterly hostile. It was painful. It wasnât a pretty picture. From the standpoint of the horse center it was embarrassing.âI realized then this was really serious.â
Nicholson had one word for the tattered relationship,
âPoisoned.â
So too for dealings with a fast-evaporating pool of donors skittish about throwing dollars at a concern that might have padlocks and chains on the doors and a legal notice nailed thereon at the start of business the following week.
Current and prospective horse show managers were less and less interested in discussing future bookings.
Then there was that delinquent USDA loan.
Provincial infighting about disciplines etc will just be divisive. Somehow the VHC folks figured it out. Perhaps a few phone calls might give the GHP people some ideas.
The VHC people have figured out how to host different disciplines to the point where they can run a CDI1* and 2* as well as a national show at the same time they host a HUGE hunter/jumper show. Itâs really interesting to watch some of the dressage horses (including mine!!) as they see horses heads going up and down when horses are jumping in the ring that sits above the DEE DEE ring (which is the CDI ring and the musical freestyle ring in that particular show).
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My point was that GMOs like GDCTA who have traditionally relied on income from their sponsored shows are being impacted financially. Oftentimes, GMOs use that income to support other endeavors such as clinics, schooling shows, awards programs, etc. Iâve mentioned before that GDCTA has a pretty robust awards program that is shored up by a very healthy number of schooling show opportunities in the N GA area - activities that help grow and feed the âpipelineâ at the grassroots level - but it is now having to figure out a financial path forward that doesnât include the certainty of a flux of income every few years from hosting Regionals.
But as I said, it is what it is. Serious competitors with high-end horses are not going to risk their horseâs health by competing on footing that isnât up to their standards, or by putting them in substandard stabling, etc., so they will continue to support whatever venue they can afford that offers the best amenities. That isnât GIHP anymore - and it is pretty sad that an entity whose name implies that it is a state equestrian facility is in actuality being supported mainly by tax dollars from a local municipality.
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