The FEI held a Stakeholders meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday 11 February 2015 to discuss the future of dressage. The meeting had representatives from the FEI Dressage Committee, the IDRC, trainers, judges and organisers, and FEI president Ingmar De Vos.
The IDRC was represented by its chair Kyra Kyrklund, its secretary-general wayne Channon and the rider representative on the FEI Dressage Committee, Anna Paprocka-Campanella. "The attendance of the FEI President showed the importance that the FEI places on Stakeholder input," Channon explained.
Wayne also wrote:
The objective of the meeting was to discuss how to make dressage more popular. Our ranking as an Olympic sport, and thus our survival Olympic, depends on viewing figures (both TV and online); social media activity; press, etc.
There has been a lot of speculation that the FEI has adopted a Short Grand Prix and that we will be forced to adopt this. The fact is that this is not true. As I mentioned on social media several weeks ago, the FEI is, quite rightly, examining all possibilities for increasing the popularity of dressage. The Stakeholder meeting was an excellent example of where the FEI has played “devil’s advocate” and suggested a Short GP, amongst other ideas, and asked for a response from riders, trainers, judges and organisers.
We, and the other stakeholders, had the opportunity to present the views of our members on this and our other ideas for developing dressage.
I am sure you will all be thinking, what was the conclusion? What were the decisions? When in reality, it was not that kind of discussion. The meeting was essentially a brainstorming to discuss options and see what was possible, what was impossible, and the potential for introducing innovative new ideas. It is now over to the FEI to evaluate these options and make some decisions.
What I can say is that it was extremely useful to have the opinion of over 2,500 dressage enthusiasts! This gave a factual basis for the IDRC input. The survey now has almost 3,000 respondents and as soon as it is closed we will be presenting its findings.
- by Wayne Channon
Photo © Dirk Caremans
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