FEI SPORTS FORUM 2014: will be held on 28-29 April at IMD, Business School, Lausanne (SUI)

25th April -  The 2014 edition of the FEI Sports Forum will be held on 28-29 April  at IMD, Business School, Lausanne (SUI).

The FEI Extraordinary General Assembly will be held in conjunction with the FEI Sports Forum on 29 April at 9am.

MEETINGS & TOPICS

All meetings will be held at IMD, International Institute for Management Development, in the M100 Auditorium of the Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Center, Ch. Bellerive 34, 1007 Lausanne. IMD is a seven-minute walk from the Mövenpick hotel.

The subjects that will be addressed during the FEI Sports Forum are: Jumping Event Classification System, FEI Footing Project, FEI Sustainability Programme, FEI Online Entry System, Endurance, Alltech FEI World Equestrian GamesTM 2014 progress report and Vaulting.

FEI JUMPING EVENT CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM FORUM

In 2003, a star level system that graded events from one to five was created for CSIs. This system, which was later applied to CSIOs, graded events on the sole basis of the amount of prize money they offered. There were very few 5* events at that time and it was assumed that the top riders would compete at the events with the highest amount of prize money. But the explosion of the number of 5* events in recent years has again made it difficult to identify top events. In 2013, for example, 13 CSIO-5* and 40 CSI-5* events took place. But were they really all “top events”?
The concept of an event classification system was introduced in Jumping in 2010, with a long-term goal of evaluating all Jumping events according to a standardised “template” of objective criteria. When the concept was discussed at the inaugural Sports Forum, delegates agreed that in addition to the difficulty of identifying top events, the prize-money-only system did not encourage event organisers to improve their facilities, as excellence was not rewarded.
After some fine-tuning of the evaluation template, a new Event Classification System (ECS) was trialled in spring 2013 at Western European League events of the Longines FEI World Cup™ Jumping 2013 series. The system took into account all the factors that contribute to a top event, including the level of the competition and venue facilities. The new system will provide useful feedback to organisers and aims to increase transparency within the sport by enabling the equestrian world and public to identify top events at a glance. It will be used this year to evaluate all CSIOs that have been selected for European Divisions 1 and 2 of the 2014 Furusiyya FEI Nations Cup™ Jumping series, as well as CSIOs that wish to be included in these Divisions in 2015.
John Madden, Chair of the FEI Jumping Committee, and Carl Spencer of KS&R, a market research provider, will present the current status of the ECS, which is based on information extracted from existing documents (Foreign Judge’s Report, Veterinary Report, Draft Schedule, etc), with limited modifications to include key evaluation criteria. John Madden and Carl Spencer will show how the ECS will use various reporting routes for the FEI so that the data can be used for a variety of purposes and give events prompt and valuable feedback.
Among specific items to be presented will be the process of scoring an event, including paperwork carried out before, during and after each event, and the means by which organisers will be able to review their score prior to publication. John Madden will ask for feedback on certain elements of the ECS evaluation template, notably their importance (weighting) in the overall scoring of events. Input from all delegates will be very welcome.

Go to the link below to see the complete program:

http://www.fei.org/fei/about-fei/sportsforum/2014