I have written this countless times before, but it’s worth repeating again: a big part of positive change is understanding everyone’s perspective. Eventing has an incredible number of important role players and we need to do a better job of understanding how each contributes to making eventing better. Kelly Gage is a clinic and event organizer who helped found Team EnGaged LLC, an equestrian event management company that specializes in equestrian education in Kentucky. They host 15 to 20 events a year and they have hosted clinicians including Edward Gal, Stephen Bradley, and Christoph Hess. In this second part of a two article series, Kelly was kind enough to write to us about involving governing bodies to create basic guidelines and standards for events and EO for a more successful pipeline from clinic to show. [Part 1] Thanks for writing this Kelly and thank you for reading:
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From Kelly:
I used to run marathon in college for fun and for fitness. I did it in hopes to one day do a mini Iron Man. 26.2 miles isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, nor is the daily five mile grind to keep in shape (or subsequent shoe bill that made my farrier blush), but what it does give you is a lot of time to learn about another sport.
What does distance running and triathlon have to do with improving equestrian sport? A lot.
Running, and more specifically triathlon, have developed highly-available base guidelines that everyone from a grass roots wanna-be runner (such as yours truly was) all the way to the elite of the sport could tap into and develop the sport that they come to consider second nature.
These guidelines addressed everything from picking and choosing officials (in our case: clinicians and officials), choosing venues with regional contacts to ask questions that are geared toward the local population, media training, how to develop and solicit sponsorship all the way to event execution (expectation, proposed schedules, et all).
That guideline, while aged, battered and covered in coffee stains remains a guideline of how as an EO, I, alongside my partner have tried to develop our clinics and future events.
It wasn’t until I started working alongside someone who was aiming for World Singles Driving Championships that a guideline for individual athletes were made available, not by USEF, but USOC. The USOC, a non-equestrian entity, had to train equestrians in how to handle media, how to solicit sponsorship, how to potentially go about promoting themselves and discipline.
By utilizing the communication and organization power of the governing bodies, we could develop better basic guidelines that transcend regional differences and provide common sense advice to organizers and managers of how to develop and execute events safely, effectively and for the long-term.
A lot of what goes into good events is promotion through diverse platforms. It means being accessible to not just the VIPs and media, but to the girl who showed up.
It also means utilizing different ways of collaborating with different inter-event entities to accomplish a common goal. This could include EO’s working together to bring in a big European trainer/rider/judge to tour different regions for clinics or shows. It could mean shows allowing different disciplines, or even sub-headline events to take place simultaneously during the star act.
As a side benefit, it creates a pipeline of people and communication between parties that ultimately improves the community and allows the rider base the ability to not only show, but further their education at a lower personal cost to themselves and the organizers. It also allows the entry level to be far more accessible and perhaps provides a clearer path to creating the next generation of organizers, leaders and eventing enthusiasts for years to come.
