In April 2020 and in the interest of legacy I wrote a Wikipedia entry recording the thoughts and notable works of Harveywetdog. I admit I was ignorant of the rules concerning self promotion on Wikipedia and consequently my entry was correctly deleted and my account expunged from the system. As a result my original words and links were sadly lost but nevertheless here is a rewrite. Perhaps when I'm gone someone will be able to enter it onto Wikipedia as a fitting epitaph for my time on the Harveywetdog Project.
I have to be honest I had great hopes for the era of Helen West as CEO of British Eventing - I openly supported her and was pleased to see her elected back in 2021. We had seen a string of resignations, David Holmes, Jude Matthews and Fiona O'Hara and here was the chance of a period of stability led by someone who clearly understands the business.
But we live in difficult and challenging times; it is possible that no matter who is in charge the combined impact of Covid and the War in Ukraine and the consequential rise in the cost of living was always going to hit horse ownership and competition hard and eventing, with its unique set of problems, even harder.
The impact of these issues, and the various ways of addressing them, is becoming clearer now that the British Eventing fixtures list for 2023 has been published. As we saw in 2022 venues are chasing an ever decreasing yet increasingly demanding number of competitors. British Eventing's response to this challenge was explained in the published Q&A from the AGM in December.
"We have listened hard to
organisers and understand the challenges of running events, especially in the
difficult climate we face. As you will all be aware, as a former organiser myself,
I have run every level from BE80 to CCI5* and fully comprehend the challenges
you all face. BE venues, who don't run International Classes, can run UA 3
phase events as long as it is not within a 14 day period after the BE event, and
many venues do this very successfully across the country. This allows them to
spread their XC costs over a number of events."
Clearly the biggest impact is on those venues who will run one of the 27 International Events in 2023 and for whom the 14 day exclusion period does not appear to apply. The thinking behind this is not entirely clear but will obviously hit some venues harder than others. Some venues will not pursue their ambitions to run International Events in the interest of maintaining their unaffiliated programme while others may chose to move the other way. Ultimately these are hard business decisions that have to be made but tinged with sadness recognising the pride of running a successful event for a number of years.
While British Eventing are still able to provide what appears to be a full calendar of events I detect from social media that there are some regions of the UK that are beginning to feel neglected either from a lack of events or from poorly timed events. We will see how this unfolds in 2023. I am also seeing a more structured and seemingly viable alternative unaffiliated programme through competitions such as the Cotswold Cup and Horse Events' National Unaffiliated Championship.
I briefly visited the Cotswold Cup venue at Oxstalls in 2022 and was impressed by the number of 80?cm competitors waiting to take part late on Saturday afternoon. Oxstalls will now run a British Eventing competition in June 2023 and do not figure in the Cotswold Cup calendar for 2023 so I hope they still get another bumper crop of entries. Oxstalls is a very accessible, compact site with well constructed and varied fences including a very impressive water complex so I hope it works out well for them.
For my part I'm happy to see Cirencester Park establishing itself in the calendar although I'm sorry to miss out on both Weston Park and Withington Manor. Hopefully I'll be allowed to video at Bicton in May although I appreciate not everyone is happy with Houghton losing out. And then there's Blenheim; fingers crossed that we have something sorted out by next September.
It just remains for me to wish you all a successful 2023 and ask you what you think of the British Eventing fixtures schedule and where do you plan to compete in the year ahead?
David spent approaching 50 years in Her Majesty's Electricity Supply Industry before retiring
He was part of the highly successful design team on the Sizewell B Nuclear Power Station Project before spending 25 years producing safety cases to keep our aging AGR fleet generating for the good of the nation
He is responsible for the Harveywetdog YouTube Channel which he maintains as an outlet for his creative talents
David is currently recovering from blood cancer but refuses to be a victim
All views are his own but might be influenced by the drugs he's currently having to take
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