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Australian Olympic Youth Festival
Equestrian is privileged to be included in the next Festival that is
being organised by the Australian Olympic
Committee for January 2005. This is a first for the sport as we have not
been successful on previous occasions. Our
participation is, however, restricted to Dressage and Jumping,
something that will disappoint our young Eventing
riders. If Equestrian “scores well” this time, we may be able to
talk the AOC into including Eventing in 2007.
There are still many things to be sorted out.
Jenny Carroll (Dressage), Katrina Dukats (Jumping) and I will attend a
seminar about the AYOF next Tuesday. In due
course, we will add a special section to our web but for an overview,
you can go to:
http://www.olympics.com.au/?pg=youth&spg=main
Athens 2004 Olympic Games
Our National Coach Wayne Roycroft, our Olympic Team Manager
Gareth McKeen and I attended the final Olympic
team management meeting with the Australian Olympic Committee in
February. All Olympic sports were
represented. We received briefings on aspects of the Olympic
preparation including security issues, travel policies,
uniform and outfitting issues, athlete information collection, media
services, Olympic village layout, venue updates
etc etc. Having been the Competition Manager for Equestrian at
the Sydney Olympic Games it brought back many
memories (not all fond!) of the huge amount of issues that have to be
addressed. The National Office and Gareth in
particular will be very busy between now and August with fulfilling all
the administrative requirements, implementing
plans and liaising with the AOC and the Athens Organising Committee to
ensure the needs of our team are met.
High Performance and the
Australian Sports Commission
The high performance area continues to move along and Gareth has advised
me of a couple of new initiatives that have
been put in place in the various programs. Examples of these include a
greater emphasis on recognising the role of
horse owners at the high performance end of the sport, taking a case
management approach to the needs to riders and
how the EFA can assist the riders within the high performance
guidelines. There is also the appointment
of a medical officer and a more formal approach to running
training clinics in the UK for the Eventers
based there, to name but a few.
The government requirements and paperwork also continue to take up a
significant part of our attention. Both Gareth
and I have had separate meetings with the ASC in recent weeks, for
different reasons. The $1.2 million per year
from the ASC for our high performance area requires significant work by
the EFA to receive in the first place and then
acquit financially. We continue to battle the perception that equestrian
riders are all wealthy. Part of our challenge
is to convince the funding agencies that not only is this perception
largely incorrect but that Equestrian
deserves to be included in the mainstream of Australian sports funding.
We will continue to fight the good fight on
behalf of our riders and members and with
Athens around the corner the anticipation of another successful
campaign should keep our motivation high.
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