United States Eventing Association

While not an eventer himself, Jim Moyer has been involved in the eventing community for five decades through his late wife, instructor Jean Moyer. When Jean died in 2020, Jim continued volunteering in the sport to stay busy in retirement and stay connected to the community he loves.

For the second year of the program, the United States Eventing Association (USEA) is proud to award free Digital Memberships to qualified participants of the Volunteer Incentive Program (VIP) that completed 10 or more hours of volunteer service through EventingVolunteers.com in 2023. The Digital Membership, which was introduced in January of last year, serves as a “thank you” to the loyal volunteers in our sport for their dedication to supporting events around the country throughout the year.

For Jameson Cahill, volunteering is a way of life, and she's enjoyed donating her time to events across Area IX. In 2023, she clocked 63.30 hours to top the Area IX USEA Volunteer Incentive Program leaderboard. Learn more about Cahill below!

One of the hottest topics in any equestrian industry is gut health. Attendees of the 2023 USEA Annual Meeting & Convention were treated to a crash course in the equine digestive system led by Doug Leavitt and Alex Brannon with USEA sponsor Nutrena Feeds. Leavitt and Brannon talked in-depth about the role probiotics and calcite can play in gut and immune support in horses and how Nutrena’s newest proprietary blend, Digestive Shield, checks all of the boxes.

There are currently 48 states which are covered under the Equine Activity Liability Act. This act, which does not apply in the states of California or Maryland, shifts the burden of the risk involved in equine activities onto the participant. However, as USEA Board of Governor member and attorney Yvonne Ocrant pointed out during her seminar, “Equine Law 101: Understanding & Minimizing Risk of Liability in Equine Activities,” which took place during the 2023 USEA Annual Meeting & Convention, there are always exceptions to every rule.

In recent years, the importance of diversity in equestrian sport has taken the spotlight, and Strides For Equality Equestrians (SEE) is working towards making all disciplines, including eventing, a more friendly and welcoming place for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), as well as underrepresented groups.

This past year has been a great one for eventing in the U.S., but it was also an amazing year for members of the USEA’s Volunteer Incentive Program (VIP). Over the course of 191 events which utilized eventingvolunteers.com to track volunteer hours, an impressive 4,134 volunteers dedicated 70,720 hours of volunteer time to horse trials across the country. The Volunteer Incentive Program, which was formed in 2015, was created to recognize the USEA’s dedicated volunteers through national and area leaderboards which award year-end awards and prizes. Here are the volunteers that topped the leaderboards across the 2023 season!

The USEA Foundation’s mission is to “protect and preserve the sport of eventing for future generations and to provide support for the core educational, safety, and equine welfare programs of the USEA.” The Foundation also administers educational grants for riders with the intent of preparing them to reach their goals. There are a variety of grants available to USEA members of all ages and experiences and for those who aren’t riders as well. Most grants come through individual donors who have a passion for a specific area of the sport.

Attendees of the 2023 USEA Annual Meeting & Convention were in for a real treat with this year’s keynote speaker, Dr. Temple Grandin. Dr. Grandin is an icon in the worlds of agriculture and autism and is most notably known for applying her own experiences as an autistic individual to her studies on how stress impacts both humans and animals. In this year’s keynote address, Dr. Grandin shared several different scenarios encountered in both her studies and the studies of her animal science students at Colorado State University that apply to the equestrian community.

The last Olympic long-format was run in 2000 in Sydney, Australia, and the last Kentucky long-format was in 2005. After the transition to the current eventing format, the USEA Classic Three-Day Task Force was born in 2005 by supporters of the traditional format who felt that its influence on the sport was critical in the education of horses and riders.