The USEF annual meeting is underway in Lexington, Kentucky right now and, as you may have noticed, it’s getting about as much coverage as the Green Bay Packers wide receivers got in Atlanta last weekend.
The most important item for eventers at the convention is probably the mandatory helmet rule change proposal stipulating that buckled and approved helmets must be worn at all times when mounted at eventing competitions. As we all know, the mandatory helmet proposal received virtually no opposition at the USEA convention in December and was unanimously passed by the USEA Board. However, US eventing faces the strange circumstance of having the rules at our national competitions set by the USEF rather than the USEA, and so the rule change proposal can only becomes a rule with the USEF’s consent.
While many of us might assume that the USEF would just rubber stamp the rule since the USEA has unanimously asked the USEF to enact what is a sensible rule promoting safety that would only affect eventers, that is not necessarily the case. This rule proposal would make eventing the first USEF sport (to my knowledge) in which the USEF passes a ‘mandatory at all all-times’ helmet rule. One worry is that USEF members from other disciplines who do not support mandatory helmets could oppose the eventing helmet rule to avoid a precedent being set that might someday affect their own sport.
The rule proposal has been working its way through the various USEF committees since Wednesday, and, from what I hear this afternoon, it will likely make it to the Sunday USEF Board meeting where the board will vote to determine if the proposal will indeed become a final rule.
However, the fate of the helmet rule still seems uncertain. One eventer involved in the rule proposal process told me today that the proposal is “a long way from becoming a rule.” If the USEF were to spurn a unanimous USEA request for a rule that would only affect eventing, then things could get very interesting indeed.
For information on non-helmet eventing topics discussed at the USEF annual meeting on Thursday, Diana De Rosa has posted this article with the Examiner. Go eventing.
