The Adequan® U.S. Para Dressage Team earned gold in the CHI Al Shaqab CPEDI3* (© CHI Al Shaqab) Lexington, Ky. – The Adequan® U.S. Para Dressage Team had strong performances at CHI Al Shaqab CPEDI3* held February 23-25 in Ar-Rayyan, Qatar. Under the guidance of Chef d’Equipe Michel Assouline, the team of Beatrice de Lavalette and Sixth Sense, Fiona Howard and Jagger, and Kate Shoemaker and Quiana delivered several personal-best scores in FEI competition to secure their...

Wellington, Fla. – The Dutta Corp. U.S. Dressage Team took second place in the FEI Dressage Nations Cup™ USA CDIO3* on a final team score of 427.285 at the Adequan® Global Dressage Festival on Friday. Germany took first place on a final score of 437.844, with Sweden finishing in third on team total of 414.498. The U.S. team was led by Debbie McDonald and George Williams, serving as Technical Advisor and Chef d’Equipe, in their first outing of the 2023 season. The team was...

Lexington, Ky. – The USEF Board of Directors met on Saturday, January 14, at the 2023 US Equestrian Annual Meeting in Lexington, Ky. During the meeting, Judy Werner was elected Vice President and Ellie Brimmer was added as an athlete representative. Judy Werner (Waterloo, Ill.) brings a long history of service in US Equestrian governance, having served on numerous committees and councils, including as Vice President of the Executive Committee, Hearing Committee Co-Chair, Audit Committee...

Sydney Moriarty is a lifelong hunter/jumper rider and a second-year medical student at the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine. In 2021, she graduated with a B.S. in Clinical Neuroscience from Virginia Tech, where she worked at the Helmet Lab assisting on the Equestrian STAR helmet rating project . Moriarty gave a presentation on the history, future, and current research around equestrian helmets, body protectors, and air vests. Here are five key takeaways from her presentation: 1....

Ellen Ahearn and Eric Markell at Badminton. We became involved in the sport of eventing when our daughter, Alexandra Ahearn, became an eventer. She started in Michele Pestl’s program in Renton, WA on an older horse named Sir Frederick. After a couple of years, it was clear that Alex had advanced as a rider to the point she needed a younger, more vibrant horse. So, off Michele and Ellen went to Munich, Germany, where we were fortunate enough to locate and purchase Mai Baum at the...

Jane Hamlin My journey as a judge has led me from northern New England all around the world, including judging at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. It’s been an exciting ride starting when two friends and I traveled down monthly to the New England Dressage Association dressage judges’ program. This was prior to the USDF “L” program. We had the good fortune to spend a weekend a month for nine months learning from different judges before taking our final exam to become a...

Photos taken at the US Equestrian Annual Meeting by Adam Brennan are now available here . Browse and download images from the Pegasus Awards and SmartPak/USEF Horse of the Year Awards. If you share photos on social media, please credit the photographer as Adam Brennan @picturesbyab. To purchase high-quality prints and downloads from photographer Adam Brennan, go to picturesbyab.com . To access the US Equestrian 2022 gallery, use password Equestrian2022 . For media requests of high-resolution...

Alex Waldrop, the former Chief Executive Officer of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA), shared U.S. horse racing’s history and recapped some of the challenges that horse racing has faced in the past 15 years. The challenges affected horse racing’s social license to operate and required earnest changes to improve horse welfare. “An old adage comes to mind: ‘If you can’t be a good example, you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.’...

Lexington, Ky. – US Equestrian congratulates 2022 International Equestrian of the Year Adrienne Lyle and 2022 National Equestrian of the Year Hunt Tosh. Lyle and Tosh were nominated as Equestrians of Honor and selected by US Equestrian member voting in December. Both Equestrians of the Year were honored at the 2023 Pegasus Awards Dinner at the USEF Annual Meeting in Lexington, Ky., on Jan. 12. Adrienne Lyle. ©Matt Turer/US Equestrian International Equestrian of the Year –...

Blacksburg, Va. – On Dec. 7, the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab released the results of its first-ever rating of equestrian helmets. Over the past two years, Virginia Tech researchers analyzed over 100 videos of riders falling off horses, precisely measured the hardness of the sand, dirt, grass, and synthetic surfaces underfoot at equestrian events, and dragged dummy heads and other equipment — and boxes and boxes of helmets — out to Virginia Tech’s equestrian facilities to...