American Endurance Ride Conference Votes To Leave USEF

Chronofhorse.com - Full Article

By: Ann Glavan
Jan 16, 2019

On Jan. 14 American Endurance Ride Conference board members voted to terminate the AERC/U.S. Equestrian Federation endurance affiliate agreement at the end of 2019.

“There’s been some dissatisfaction from different segments of our membership for a number of years now over what has gone on overseas with [Regional Group 7],” said AERC President Monica Chapman. Group 7 is the geographical designation the Fédération Equestre Internationale assigns to the Middle East.

“The whole flat track race riding style is not palatable to some of our members,” Chapman continued.

Group 7 has come under attack in recent years for a variety of issues in endurance, including horse injuries and deaths from riding too fast, doping violations and outright cheating.

In 2015 the FEI suspended the United Arab Emirates Equestrian Federation for its endurance violations, and the FEI introduced new rules with harsher penalties for doping and mandatory rest periods for horses between rides.

In October of this year the FEI set up a temporary committee to: “Urgently assess the issues currently affecting the sport of Endurance and carry out an in-depth review of the rules in order to identify the most effective way of bringing the discipline back to its original roots of Endurance riding as opposed to Endurance racing, with horse welfare and horsemanship at its core, while still maintaining the competitive aspect of the sport.”

The AERC was established in 1972 as the national governing body for long distance riding and has just under 5,000 members today. As the USEF endurance affiliate, AERC represents the international discipline of endurance, which has a body of rules in the USEF Rule Book.

“We have a portion of our membership that doesn’t want to be associated with USEF; they feel USEF isn’t doing what they can to address horse welfare concerns,” Chapman said. “We don’t want the abusive actions of some riders in Region 7 to tarnish the whole sport; we don’t want to be guilty by association...”

Read more here:
http://www.chronofhorse.com/article/american-endurance-ride-conference-votes-to-leave-usef