Top dressage venue severs ties with BD [H&H VIP]

The Yorkshire-based Frys Equestrian (pictured), owned by the Fry family, will no longer hold any affiliated British Dressage (BD) shows after “miscommunications” between the centre and the governing body for dressage.

Owner Simon Fry told H&H: “We’ve parted company with BD. We confirmed with them that we would, as usual, hold our senior training camp in 2015 before booking all the equipment.

“Then we spotted there were two other camp venues listed in the north region around the same time as ours. We were assured ours was going ahead as planned, but [my wife] Julie smelled a rat and pushed and pushed the RDO [Regional Development Officer] Sarah Huntridge until she admitted that the camp had indeed been taken away from us.”

BD cited “miscommunications” and said it regretted that Frys would no longer be holding affiliated shows.

“Towards the end of 2014 when the camps were allocated, there were some miscommunications, which Sarah has apologised for,” said BD’s Paul Graham.

“We’ve been in discussions with Frys for a number of months, which have culminated in them deciding not to be a BD venue any more.

“After a long and successful association with BD we are obviously disappointed to lose Frys as a venue, but understand and respect their reasons for deciding not to continue. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the team at Aike Grange Stud for their tremendous support and contribution to the sport over the years.

“If they changed their mind tomorrow, we’d definitely have them back.”

Simon added that BD told him it was policy to rotate camps. “But I had never heard that before,” he said.

BD points out that in its training policy it states that training activity will be offered to members on the best geographical basis to membership.

“It doesn’t specify camps,” explained Paul. “But it is all training activity, so it means a camp won’t stay in one place all the time.

“The north is a particularly big region, so training needs to move around in order to give the best possible access to members.”

This disagreement over Frys’ camp was the final straw in an ongoing spat between the two parties.

“BD had also docked two of our affiliated show dates out of the 10 we ran every year, which we weren’t happy about,” said Simon.

“We feel that the respect for us as long-time senior show organisers has been totally lost. It beggars belief. BD needs to start looking after its organisers.”

Simon will now turn his attentions to his daughter Lottie, who is currently based with the Van Olsts training in Holland.

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