News
A message from Dressage Anywhere
- Written By: Dressage Anywhere
- Published: Mon, 06 Apr 2020 16:36
We are really sad to announce that we are closing our April online dressage competition and training classes. Please understand that this decision has not been taken lightly.
We have been advising our members to follow Government rules around social distancing and not taking unnecessary risks to ride their horses. The last thing we want is for a member to have an accident that requires hospital treatment at any time, but particularly now, we must take responsibility and ensure we don't add extra pressures to our health services and the amazing health workers who are going above and beyond to treat and look after those impacted by COVID-19.
British Dressage has issued further guidance that states it does not endorse any online competition or training activity and we feel very strongly that we must align ourselves with this and not ask our BD judges to side-step this request.
BEF and BHS strongly advise to consider the risks around riding and of course every situation is different and some horses, particularly competition horses, may need to be kept in work for their own safety and well being. But we don't believe this should extend to practicing for and riding a dressage test for competition.
In the UK we have very strong guidance from our Government to stay at home, slow the spread of the virus and save lives. We believe we must do our bit to support this and not put pressure on people to potentially ignore this guidance.
I've Already Entered, What Next?
We have received some April videos and will contact those riders to find out if they would like to transfer their entry to our next competition or be judged by a BD List 1 trainer judge with some additional feedback to help them in their training. All entries without videos will be transferred to our next competition. If you have any questions at all about this, please do get in touch.
If you were getting ready to film your test, don't worry, our next competition will run the same classes and tests and we hope to be able to open this before live competitions recommence so you'll have an opportunity to practice and get feedback from a BD list 1 or 2 judge.
Keep a look out for a very special competition we're about to launch which is open to all and in aid of charity!
