Albury-Wodonga Equestrian Centre coordinator Barb Chenoweth doesn't expect any impacts to the running of events on the Border in the wake of Equestrian Australia going into volunteer administration this week.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
This comes despite the Australian Sports Commission withdrawing funding from the sport's national body and threatening to permanently remove its Olympic accreditation unless its governance improves.
Some uncertainty surrounded the annual Albury-Wodonga International Horse Trials, which can be run as an Olympic qualifier on the Border.
However, the Border facility falls under Equestrian New South Wales and has assured Chenoweth it is financially stable and will continue to operate as per usual.
"In terms of the equestrian centre and events, the only thing that's really impacting us is COVID," Chenoweth said.
"To my understanding, the major impact is on the high performance people.
"Equestrian NSW, who we deal with for the Horse Trials, have assured us in a written letter that we're stable, we've got money and insurance will run as usual.
ALSO IN SPORT:
"Things like polocrosse, which is another large event for us, isn't run under Equestrian Australia, it's a separate body.
"It's easy to think that it means every single equestrian discipline, but it actually doesn't.
"At the centre, we're just wanting to know when we can hold events again due to COVID.
"Except for the Horse Trials, the events we have are much more at the grassroots level, so at this stage we're not particularly impacted."
The next significant event for Albury-Wodonga Equestrian Centre is the Albury Horse Show in September and Chenoweth doesn't anticipate any competitive riding before then.
"We're certainly planning to hold events as soon as the health orders allow us to. That's of much more concern to us at the moment," she said.
"Like everybody else, we're subject to those health orders.
"For our adult riding events, we're waiting until that overarching body is happy and the insurers are happy for us to go ahead.
"For our Equestrian NSW events, we've got to wait until they're happy, so we're playing a bit of a waiting game.
"Those bodies are monitoring the health orders and once the health orders allow us to have groups of 100 or whatever it may be, we'll start getting into it.
"Like everyone else, we could do all this planning, but they could come back and say we're locked down again."