The FEI European Championships in the Olympic and Paralympic disciplines of jumping, eventing, dressage and para dressage will not be held in 2021 due to the revised dates for the Tokyo Games next year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. European Championships in the non-Olympic disciplines will still be organized in 2021.

The Hungarian capital of Budapest had been due to play host to five disciplines next summer—jumping, dressage, para dressage, driving and vaulting—from August 23 to September 5, 2021. However, the proximity of the championships to the rescheduled Olympic and Paralympic Games has meant that it is no longer feasible to run jumping, dressage and para dressage. As part of its 50th anniversary celebrations of the first FEI European Driving Championships in Budapest back in 1971, the organizers will maintain both driving and vaulting next year.

The 2021 FEI European Eventing Championships were scheduled to take place August 11-15 at Haras du Pin, France, which is also the venue from the eventing test of the 2014 FEI World Equestrian Games, but the decision has been made to cancel those championships following the postponement of Tokyo 2020.

The new dates for the Tokyo Olympic Games are July 23 to August 8, 2021 and the Paralympic Games will run from August 24 through September 5, 2021.

The FEI Board has agreed that the bid process for the 2021 European Championships in these show jumping, eventing, dressage, and para dressage will not be reopened, as all organizers would face the same challenges of trying to host major championships so close to the Tokyo Olympic Games.

“Together with the Organizing Committees of both Budapest and Haras du Pin, as well as the Hungarian and French National Federations, we have examined every possible option to try and save the championships in 2021,” said FEI Secretary General Sabrina Ibáñez. “But we have reached the regrettable decision that it simply is not possible to have these important events so close to the Olympic and Paralympic Games next year.

“While there are some nations that have enough horsepower to send strong teams to the Olympic and Paralympic Games and also to the European Championships across the four disciplines, we have to offer a level playing field to all eligible countries, and we simply cannot do that in this case, so we have agreed that the focus should be on Tokyo next year.

“Of course, it is desperately disappointing to lose these championships from the 2021 calendar, but we will continue to support Budapest with their double Europeans for driving and vaulting.”

The FEI Secretary General has overall responsibility for the FEI calendar and is currently chairing the eight discipline-specific task forces that have been set up to seek ways of mitigating the effect of the current COVID-19 pandemic on the FEI calendar, including the knock-on effects into 2021.

“It was the very first time that a Central European country had won the opportunity to organize the prestigious FEI multidiscipline European Championships,” said Dorottya Stróbl, member of the Managing Board of the Budapest Organizing Committee and Secretary General of the Hungarian Equestrian Federation. “We strongly believed that the event would serve as a high motivation for the owners and sponsors in Hungary and in the neighboring countries and promote the sport towards the elite level, but we understand that the significant challenges of holding major FEI championships in the Olympic and Paralympic disciplines in the year of the Olympic and Paralympic Games has meant that, unfortunately, cancellation was inevitable. However, we will continue to work to ensure the very highest level of FEI driving and vaulting European sport in Budapest next year.”

Valérie Moulin, president of the Ustica Organizing Committee at Haras du Pin, also expressed her disappointment. “We are very disappointed that the rescheduling of Tokyo 2020 has led to the cancellation of the championships in Haras du Pin, but unfortunately we were unable to find alternative dates outside August 2021,” said Moulin. “We had gathered a lot of local partners, and we were financially invested. All riders counted on this date. Nevertheless, we understand that the situation has changed over the last months with the postponement of the Olympic Games. We have made a proposal to the FEI about potentially hosting the championships in 2023, and we look forward to hearing about that.”

For more information about FEI events, please visit www.fei.org.

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Black Horse One stands for modern and creative high-performance software solutions with a strong focus on equestrian sports. eDressage, the revolutionary paperless judging solution for dressage, as well as Spectator Judging and the international Degree of Difficulty System belong to the diverse portfolio of the software developer Black Horse One. Since 2007 the young, innovative company is a partner of SAP, the market leader in enterprise application software who helps companies of all sizes in all industries run at their best.

FEI-registered athletes can upload videos to the FEI eDressage Online platform every week for their FEI dressage tests to be judged anonymously by a pool of FEI five-star level dressage and para dressage judges. In the first phase, a number of videos will be randomly selected and athletes will then be provided with feedback on their performance and given pointers for improvement.

“This new platform is yet another example of the ways in which technology can be introduced into equestrian sport to transform training techniques,” FEI Commercial Director Ralph Straus said. “Athletes now have the opportunity to have their tests remotely evaluated by a group of top-level judges and to receive key insights that could benefit their performances.

“While the current pandemic highlights the value of a platform like this to athlete training when travel and competition restrictions exist, it can also be particularly useful to athletes residing in remote regions of the world, who would otherwise be unable to avail of the international expertise provided through this platform,” Straus continued.

Although the platform has been designed primarily with the horse and athlete in mind, it has the potential to become a valuable source of content for training FEI officials in close collaboration with the FEI’s online e-learning platform, FEI Campus. The user-generated content would allow the FEI to improve the video material used in training programs for FEI dressage and para dressage judges.

The FEI eDressage Online platform is not the first time software development company Black Horse One, and the market leader in enterprise application software SAP, have come together with the FEI to create unique technological solutions for the sport.

While previous initiatives have been created to enrich the competition experience for live audiences and judges, the FEI eDressage Online platform has been specifically created for a non-competitive environment. Tests will not be judged, and no rankings will be provided, but performances will be critiqued by an elite group of judges purely for training purposes.

“It is an absolute pleasure for us to launch the FEI eDressage Online platform together with the FEI and SAP, our close partner for many years now,” said Daniel Göhlen, CEO of Black Horse One. “We at Black Horse One provide innovative, high-performance software solutions specialized in equestrian sports and see this new platform as a fantastic technological development to support athletes all over the world, especially during these current uncertain times. The FEI eDressage Online platform is built on the basis of our paperless judging solution eDressage and benefits from several of our other innovations, which have been supported by SAP and established by the FEI.”

Henrike Paetz, SAP Director of Strategic Partnerships in Equestrian, also welcomed the initiative. “The launch of the new FEI eDressage Online platform is another milestone in our partnership with the FEI and long-standing cooperation with Black Horse One,” she said. “Providing a virtual training and feedback environment for international athletes is an innovative way to stay connected and up-to-speed during these challenging times and beyond and reflects our ambition as the Official Analytics Sponsor of the FEI Dressage World Cup series. We are proud to once more help reinvent the athlete experience based on our SAP Cloud Platform technology.”

Previously, the two companies combined their expert knowledge in technology and fan engagement to create the award-winning Spectator Judging app in 2017. The app enables audiences at FEI Dressage World Cup events to get into the judge’s seat, with audience scores and rankings created in realtime during the competitions and then placed side-by-side with official results on the arena scoreboards. It’s a dynamic way for live audiences to participate more actively in the sporting action provided by the world’s top dressage athletes and their horses.

A further collaboration between SAP and Black Horse One in 2018 led to the development of the Dressage Paperless Judging software, a system allowing FEI dressage and para dressage competitions to be scored without a scribe having to write down each mark on an FEI Dressage score sheet. The Paperless Judging system was designed to deliver finished and signed scores and comments to athletes immediately after each test, and also maintain fan engagement by reducing the time between the end of a competition and the awards ceremony.

“The beauty of the FEI eDressage Online platform is that it has the potential to grow and develop over time and become something larger than we initially imagined,” said Gaspard Dufour, FEI’s Director Information and Sports Technology. “For developments like these to really impact a sport, it is necessary that our technological partners understand equestrian and the needs of our stakeholders. Long-term collaborations like ours show that having the time to grow and develop together can impact the industry in a meaningful way.”

For more information, visit www.fei.org.

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FEI.TV, the international Equestrian Federation’s (FEI) online television platform, will be providing all its coverage of past events and special equestrian features free of charge to everyone while live sport is on hold until end of June.

Under normal circumstances, FEI TV live-streams all major FEI series and championships, with an extensive range of replays, special features and historic events coverage available on-demand combining to provide unparalleled coverage of equestrian sport year-round.

But with no live sport, access to FEI.TV will be free and existing subscribers will be compensated for the months of April, May and June. They will automatically be refunded on their account. All content on the platform, including video on demand, will be freely available to all users who will need to register, meaning that fans can re-live all the action from past events so there’s no need to miss out on your fix of equestrian sport.

“Premium content like this usually sits behind a paywall and is normally available only to subscribers, but while there is no “live” sport, we want to give equestrian fans the chance to binge-watch for free during this terrible pandemic,” FEI Commercial Director Ralph Straus says.

The Longines FEI Jumping World Cup and FEI Dressage World Cup Finals in Las Vegas were one of the early high-profile victims of the COVID-19 outbreak when they were cancelled in mid-March. But jumping and dressage fans now have the opportunity to relive some of the very best moments of the FEI World Cup Finals from the past five years—2015 to 2019—live and free on FEI.TV, FEI Jumping and Dressage Facebook pages, and the FEI YouTube channel daily. And if you can’t watch it live, catch it on replay on FEI.TV.

For fans of the other equestrian disciplines, FEI.TV has lots more unique content, ranging from FEI Vaulting and Driving World Cup highlights to wrap-ups of the FEI Eventing and Dressage Nations Cup series.

An additional broadcast offering has been made available by the FEI, equestrian sport’s global governing body, providing free access to video archive footage to TV broadcasters in European Broadcast Union (EBU) member territories across Europe through its partnership with EBU, and to key territories in the rest of the world via its partnership with IMG.

“Our broadcast partners are struggling to fill their air-time without live sport, so this initiative has been put in place to ensure that they have access to top equestrian footage and, together, we can keep our fans around the world happy with their daily dose of equestrian content,” Straus says.

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