Message from British Eventing CEO Rosie Williams: 

“After the recent success of Oasby, Tweseldown and Poplar, I wanted to acknowledge and applaud the incredible amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to keep these events running, despite the inclement weather. 

“Event organisers go above and beyond, putting in endless hours, blood, sweat and tears into ensuring that we have events to attend. For instance, to enable Tweseldown to run  Rachel Faulkner had to hire in a special tractor to enable lorries to be pulled off the ground should they get stuck because of the sheer weight of the modern lorry. Stuart Buntine had tonnes of gravel onsite to deal with the wet ground and the Team at Epworth had pumps running night and day for weeks to make every effort to ensure the event was able to run- unfortunately, they lost the battle. 

“It isn’t just about the going on the course, it’s ensuring people can get into the carpark, that ambulances and medical teams can get to riders quickly in an emergency. There is so much planning, organisation and decision-making that goes on that we simply do not see. The course designers, builders, the BE technical advisers (TA’s) and stewards along with all the volunteers work tirelessly.  

“I would also like to explain the decision-making process behind how and when events get abandoned. It is a decision that is never taken lightly and the TA’s and stewards are on site a lot before the event to help the organiser get the event to run. We all know what the British weather is like – a few hours really can make such a huge difference. In fact, a few hours can be the difference between an event running and being abandoned. We simply cannot and will not abandon on a forecast.  

“Event organisers want events to run, and do everything in their power to do so, including leaving it to the last possible moment to make a call. And it is for this exact reason why it is vitally important that event organisers have a contact number for ALL competitors. We had 50 people on their way to Oasby on Sunday morning that did not have a mobile number on their entry so could not be contacted. As a result they had a wasted journey and a number complained about not being contacted!!  Had we been able to they would have received the alert on their mobile and would have known that the event had been abandoned. 

“I want to finish by saying thank you again to all our event organisers and their teams who have the incredibly hard job of putting on such fantastic events for us all. Please be understanding when events are abandoned, ensure we have your mobile numbers to hand, and keep an eye on your phones for updates if there is any uncertainty about an event running. Can I also please ask our members to consider committing to entries as early as possible so that organisers can breathe a bit easier on that front while battling the weather as well as all the other logistics involved with putting on an event. 

Here’s to many more successful days this season!”