Before we get to William’s proposed ‘binning’ of CIC’s, it’s worth mentioning that the US coaching debacle has gone international. The Horse and Hound has written a brief synopsis of the situation. Our friends in the UK have to be laughing or at least pitying our incompetence at picking our next coach considering that their program has been so incredibly reliable and successful for so long. The article also links to Eventing Nation, which is much appreciated [Horse and Hound]
Moving onto the CIC’s William Fox-Pitt recently told Horse and Hound that he thinks CIC’s are pointless and should be “binned.” This is a sentiment that I have heard from riders as well as organizers and even at the USEA Convention regarding qualifications. William doesn’t speak out very often on controversial topics, but when he does he usually hits the nail on the head. I wish he would speak out much more. Here is an excerpt from William’s interview:
“I’d like to see CICs binned; their only purpose is to create a level standard across the different eventing countries, which the FEI is never going to achieve. The FEI could perfectly well make a rule that, if you compete in Britain, your advanced result will count, but that in Brazil, for example, it has to be a three-star CIC. I don’t see why a nation can’t be graded as to what it provides…
Sadly, I suspect the FEI thinks the opposite and will get rid of CCIs [three-day events] instead, which would be a tragedy. To me, the CCI is the pinnacle of each level of the sport. I think we lost an element of horsemanship when we lost the long-format and the further we go towards a glorified one-day sport, although the skill has increased, the more the danger is that horsemanship is diminished.” [via LD and JER]
Read the full interview here and go eventing.
