How British Dressage (BD) can best cater for competitors is the crux of the organisation’s upcoming sport operations director election.
Two candidates are in the mix for the role, which forms part of the BD board whose job it is to look at strategy, planning, vision and direction.
Current BD sport operations director Simon Bates, elected in September 2019, is standing for re-election against candidate Derek Pullem.
Both are proposing a simplified rule book. They are also proposing differing small changes to try to better balance the competition structure.
Among Mr Pullem’s manifesto pledges is to simplify eligibility rules as much as possible, and to “rebalance the competition structure”. This includes “protecting” Area Festivals from riders who could be competitive at regionals, making the transition from Area Festivals to regionals smoother, and rethinking rules that work against talented grassroots combinations who reach higher levels on one horse, only to find themselves then in gold sections on their other rides.
“It’s not a drastic change I’m talking about. It’s recognising how the sport has moved on and trying to accommodate all the people in a more flexible and better way,” he told H&H.
“It’s not that BD is doing a bad job, it’s just at the edges people feel they are being unfairly pigeon holed into certain categories. Dressage has changed a lot in the last 10 to 15 years.”
He added: “I do want to try to change things to reflect the way the grassroots have changed over the years. But I’m not some kind of rebel or disruptor. I want to build with BD and work with them. It’s just a way of looking at things I think that needs a change.”
His other suggestions include improving marshalling and stewarding and a collective responsibility from members to look out for each other – an idea born from his professional background in the oil industry, particularly from working offshore.
“There’s a whole ethos that says you look out for each other,” he said. “You try to keep people safe and you try to intervene if you see something going wrong. Providing it’s done in the right way, I see no reason why you can’t apply that idea to any sport.”
Mr Bates told H&H he is standing for re-election as he has “unfinished business” from his first term, which was heavily affected by the pandemic.
“There’s a lot of things that we started that I would like to see through,” he said. “The top priority at the moment, which we’ve been working on for at least the last two years, is sorting out the silver section. How we actually define which riders are silver regional riders and which riders have the choice of regionals or Area Festivals. The really broad principle we’ve been working towards with this is that we get riders to progress through the levels.
“I would really like to see riders go, for example: bronze novice, silver Area Festival novice, and then consider regional novice – rather than thinking that they’ve got to jump up to elementary bronze. We obviously want people to progress to the next level, but it’s not good for them to be pushed when they are not ready.”
One of his core aims is to ensure that “gold should not be frightening” but “a badge of honour”.
“It’s more mentality than rule book, I think, to make people want to step up to that level and be proud that they don’t need protecting any more,” he said.
He added that his plan is to “look after the whole of the sport” from Quest to the top riders, and he echoed Mr Pullem about avoiding sudden disruptive changes.
One of his other key objectives is to record horse injuries, and provision to pause a horse’s registration, with a recorded injury. The reason is that the sport needs to “know, record and understand risks” to horses, and “ensure we do not put financial penalty on recuperation time.
“It doesn’t want to go on that horse’s record, it just wants to go discreetly into the office so it can be recorded and so that intelligence exists in the sport,” he said.
BD members have until 1 September to vote. Both candidates’ full manifestos are available at: https://www.britishdressage.co.uk/news/2023-director-elections/
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