Following one of the biggest music festivals in the U.S., Chatt Hills organizer Hugh Lochore has released a statement saying that the October Horse Trials, the final event of the season at this facility, will be cancelled due to a combination of bad weather and high traffic on the property.
Hugh Lochore released the following statement yesterday:
“It is with great sadness that Chatt Hills finds itself in a position whereby it will be unable to run its up coming Horse Trials, October 24/25.
The recent music festival held on the competition grounds was a relative success but bad weather played a big part and it has left us with critical parts of our cross country course and road system that simply will not be usable in the short term.
We have tried to make this decision in as timely a manner as possible to give competitors as much opportunity to shop around for other suitable events in the area.
Reparations are under way and with significant investment, Chatt Hills will come out in the spring in better shape than ever! Thank you for your support.”
TomorrowWorld, the sister production of the European festival TomorrowLand, had its third event this year at the facility that also hosts many horse trials throughout the year. In the past two years, the festival has not affected subsequent horse trials, but the situation became too much to overcome before the end of October this year.
The festival this year made headlines for a multitude of people who were left stranded in the camping grounds after torrential rain hit the property.
After the massive crowd reaching numbers of over 150,000 left the property after the five day, four night festival, the damage sustained from the elements proved to be a big undertaking for organizers who needed to reset the property in preparation for the horse trials.
TomorrowWorld has been a big attraction for electronic music lovers, including several eventers, for the past few years. As this is the first year the festival has affected other events on the property, we will be interested to see what plans the production company puts in place if the festival were to return to Chatt Hills.
Best of luck to the hard working people at Chatt Hills who are working to remedy the situation, and we’ll look forward to the next event at this beautiful facility.
