2017 FEI General Assembly Meeting - Endurance Decisions

FEI held its General Assembly 2017 meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay on 21 November. Decisions in the sport of endurance are as follows:

The General Assembly approved changes to the Endurance Rules to be implemented on 1 January 2019.

The General Assembly voted separately on a proposal to reduce the minimum weight for CEI 3, 4 and 5* and Championships from 75kgs to 70kgs. This was approved.

The General Assembly also voted separately on raising the competition age of horses for 5*, CEIOs and Championships, where horses must now be at least nine years of age (previously eight years) and for Young Horse Championships and Championships under 130km, where the minimum age must now be eight years (previously seven). This was approved.

Other main amendments approved en bloc (also to be implemented as of 1 January 2019) include: Increases in mandatory rest periods, based on scientific presentations at the FEI Sports Forum last April and the FEI Endurance Forum last May. An additional rest period of seven days will apply for horses that reach average speeds of 20 km/hr or higher at completion. This rest period will also apply to horses which do not complete the competition whose average speed of completed phases is 20 km/hr or higher.

A new star system for Endurance events, CEI 4* and CEI 5*, will be introduced to have prime events and a higher standard of competition for horses and athletes. The new star system is not solely defined by prize money, but sets specific requirements for organisers to ensure compliance with FEI rules and high standards of horse welfare.

In order to avoid having minors registered as trainers, the minimum age of a registered trainer has been set at 18 years old.

Qualifying criteria established for new 4* and 5* events, proving the full experience of athletes and horses to guarantee a high standard of competition level, and clarification to novice qualifying criteria in relation to experienced horses and athletes. Plus a new set of rules to define qualifications of horses and athletes for Regional Championships.

New general requirements and test event rules for Championships.

These changes can be viewed here in due course. 

More information from the meeting can be seen here:
https://inside.fei.org/fei/regulations/endurance

World Equestrian Games 2022 Open for Bids… Again

Horse-Canada.com - Full Article

November 22 2017

The FEI has announced that it will re-open the bidding process for the World Equestrian Games 2022.

The announcement was made during the FEI’s General Assembly that Samorin had recently decided not to sign the host agreement. Despite lengthy discussions with the FEI, the Samorin team has withdrawn its bid and the FEI Bureau has decided to re-open the bidding process.

Under a revised timeline, the FEI World Equestrian Games 2022 will be allocated at the in-person FEI Bureau meeting in November 2018...

Read more here:
https://www.horse-canada.com/horse-news/weg-2022-open-bids/?utm_source=Enews+Nov+27%2C+2017&utm_campaign=EnewsNov272017&utm_medium=email

All the Wild Horses Takes Top Honors at Equus Film Festival

November 22 2017

The documentary "All the Wild Horses" took top honors of Best Equestrian Feature Film, Best Director, and Best of Festival at the November 17-19 Equus Film Festival in New York City.

ALL THE WILD HORSES follows international riders from around the world as they compete in the Mongol Derby in Mongolia, the longest and toughest horse race on the planet.
 
In this race across one thousand kilometers of Mongolian steppe the riders are on their own, navigating from horse station to horse station where they change horses every forty kilometers. They battle dehydration, hypothermia, exhaustion, extreme weather, swollen rivers and wild dogs. 

They stay the nights out in the wild or with nomad families. One wrong horse and they can get bucked off, lose their mount or suffer serious injuries.

More about the movie at:
http://allthewildhorsesmovie.com/index.html

UAE: Sheikh Rashid Dalmook Al Maktoum finishes in style at Al Wathba Challenge

Endurance-world.com - Full Article

by Admin
22 November 2017

Emirates International Endurance Village, Al Wathba, United Arab Emirates. Saturday 11 November 2017.

After a series of qualifying races and races for private stables we saw this Saturday with the Al Wathba Challenge the first ‘open race’ for the season in the United Arab Emirates.

The national race, CEN 120km, was divided into four loops of 40, 35, 25 and 20km.

According to UAE standards it was a rather small entry field with 148 participants, because the organiser only accepted up to 4 horses for each stable.

The Al Wathba Challenge gives enough resting time for the horses ahead of the National Day Cup and is considered for many stables as a try out for the bigger race.

“Absolutely correct” was the comment of one of the leading stables, “maybe today we did not see all the best horses in the country, but the field was very competitive and as you could notice after two loops they were flying...”

Read more here:
http://endurance-world.com/sheikh-rashid-dalmook-al-maktoum-finishes-in-style-at-al-wathba-challenge/

UAE: Latest Endurance Horse Deaths Raise Concerns About “Airbrushing” Results

Horse-canada.com - Full Article

November 20, 2017
by: Pippa Cuckson

Concerns that endurance horse deaths are being airbrushed out of official results have been raised again following two deaths at the 120km Al Marmoom Cup in Dubai Saturday.

Catswhiskers Tiro Centauri and Kurrajong Unique were listed as Catastrophically Injured (CI) in the early stages, both travelling at about 25kph. At the end of the day Tawqeet, the Dubai-owned timings operator, amended their listings to show the pair as Failed to Complete (FTC) instead. Yet on Sunday both were shown as dead on the updated horse database held by the FEI.

The Al Marmoom Cup was a UAE national ride, though was staged under FEI rules under the terms of the Emirates Equestrian Federation (EFF) legal agreement with the FEI, signed when the EEF’s suspension for horse welfare issues was lifted in July 2015.

Four other horses were listed FTC at Al Marmoom. Only 32 of the 129 starters finished...

Read more here:
https://www.horse-canada.com/horse-news/endurance-horse-deaths-results-concerns/

UAE: Dead or Alive? The Not So Strange Case of Altered Results

The CI notation was later removed and does not now show up on the race stats
Credit : Screen shot

Grandprix-replay.com - Full Article

Sunday 19 November - 17h52 | Lulu Kyriacou

For the second weekend in a row, there have been fatalities in a United Arab Emirates endurance ride, this time in the AL MARMOOM ENDURANCE CUP – CEN 120 KM. But the two horses concerned here are particularly special. They rose from the dead when the results were altered an hour or two after being published on the official scorer's website, Tawqeet.

THE ORIGINAL RESULT

The ride was organised by the Dubai International Equestrian Club in association with the Emirates Equestrian Federation. Catswhisker Tiro Centauri, a ten-year-old chestnut gelding, and Kurrajong Unique a 16-year-old bay gelding were both listed on the original live scores as CI, Catastrophically Injured. Catswhisker Tiro Centauri apparently met his end on the second loop, and poor Kurrajong Unique did not even get as far as that, he was out the first gate. The horses are both registered in the UAE and both appear to come from the same training stable although Kurrajong Unique was ridden by a Bangladeshi national Nur Mohommod Ali Bablu. Catswhisker was ridden by a more experienced rider, Khalifa Mohammed Saeed Salem ALKHYELI.

NOT DEAD AFTER ALL........ ?

An hour or so after the race finished a check on the results found that the CI had been changed to FTC (Failed To Complete)...

Read more here:
http://www.grandprix-replay.com/uk/article/5092/dead-or-alive-the-not-so-strange-case-of-altered-results

UAE Endurance - Brand New Season, Same Old Story

Grandprix-replay.com - Full Article

Sunday 12 November - 18h08 | Lulu Kyriacou

The first endurance races of the new United Arab Emirates were completed in the last few days but despite plans for new rules to be considered at this week's FEI General Assembly and the sterling efforts of Sheik Sultan's Boudheib Initiative, another horse has ended up dead.
The Spanish bred ESTEL DE MONTFLUQ (UAE) FEI number 103MW80 was competing in the CEI1* ridden by Saqar Hilal al Marouqi was originally listed on 8th November on the offical Tawqeet scores as FTC (Failed to Complete) but the horse was listed as deceased on the FEI database the same day. The horse's FEI record was subsequently updated by the FEI on November 10th to CI (Catastrophically Injured).

​On this occasion it does not look as if speed was the determining factor alone as the horse was recorded on the loops at speeds of between 14 and 16.7kph and finished at 20kph but at the second gate the gelding took 20 minutes for his heart rate to come down to acceptable parameters, indicating that there was already an issue and the horse should have been vetted out at that gate...

Read more here:
http://www.grandprix-replay.com/uk/article/5077/uae-endurance-brand-new-season-same-old-story