A “landmark” partnership a decade in the making between the American and British eventing associations was formalized, fittingly, in a matter of days over the course of one of the world’s most prestigious events. 

U.S. Eventing Association Chief Executive Officer Rob Burk said he’s been hoping to forge a partnership with British eventing officials to help expand the sport globally since he took the helm at USEA a decade ago. He and British Eventing CEO Rosie Williams OBE, who took over the top spot at USEA’s British counterpart in September 2023, had exchanged emails on the topic but never met in person. That is, until last month’s Badminton Horse Trials, in South Gloucestershire, England, which Burk attended.

The two met during the jog on the first day, Burk said, and then each subsequent day of the competition. They cemented the new alliance by the event’s end.

“We were really lucky to find a willing partner in Rosie,” Burk said. “She’s an incredible leader with a lot of vision. Immediately when Rosie and I started to talk about it, she jumped in full bore.”

The partnership between the two organizations, announced last month, is aimed at benefitting the USEA’s nearly 13,000 members and BE’s 10,000 members. It is focused on collaborating to grow the sport, develop and retain young and adult riders, and share best practices for everything from information technology to education to training officials and recruiting volunteers.

“We want to grow the sport in both countries,” Burk said. “We want to have a really good system for bringing up young riders and supporting them all the way into the adult (ranks).

“My goal is that we create a better education pathway for all of our members in both countries,” he continued. “We’re going to look at each other’s programs, take the good ideas from each, and meld them. There’s the old adage that if you raise the water level, all ships rise. We have successful eventing programs in both countries, and we want our ranks to grow. Anything we can do to work together is beneficial for all of us.”

Williams said she and Burk “think very much alike,” a factor they initially discovered during email exchanges and fully realized in their first face-to-face meeting.

 “We had long conversations about the challenges that we face in both of our organizations but also talked about our strengths, both personally and from an organizational point of view,” Williams said. “We decided there and then that we liked each other and that we could work together for the good of the sport, both in our respective countries but also globally.

“For me, the great advantage is having somebody like Rob to bounce ideas off and work together with in the same sporting environment,” Williams added. “I think when we get this right, this will be advantageous for lots of different stakeholders across both organizations.”

The pillars of the partnership will be information sharing; piloting programs to help develop and support competitors, officials and volunteers; and collaboration on IT best practices.

“At USEA, we have a small but mighty IT team. In the last 20 years, we got ahead of the game in membership management and event management,” Burk said, pointing to how the USEA IT team manages multiple websites and systems for competition entries, event management, scheduling, scoring, membership and volunteers. “We have all of these IT systems and, interestingly enough, BE is trying to develop theirs. They’re going to be able to look at what we’ve done and see if any of our systems are feasible for use in the UK.”

Another pilot project came about quickly and by happenstance. Two of Burk’s aims are to increase course-designer ranks in the U.S. by sending designers to England to learn under their top designers and also develop and manage volunteers. As luck would have it, a seasoned English volunteer just happened to be moving to New York, and she now finds herself at the center of the partnership’s first pilot on volunteering.

Delia Brandwood, 62, moved to New York two weeks ago with her husband, Paul Brandwood, CEO of 3Share. The couple, who have three grown children, moved from West Somerset and plan to remain in New York for at least two years. Delia is a life-long horseperson, BE volunteer, and Pony Club leader. She and Annabel Trollope-Bellew, her “partner in crime” and fellow longtime BE volunteer, were fence judging at the FEI Eventing Nations Cup event at Bicton International Horse Trials, May 22-25, in Devon, as one last hurrah together before Delia’s move. Williams was there, and after she addressed the volunteers, Delia introduced herself and subsequently mentioned that she was relocating to New York. Hence the start of the “volunteer exchange” program.

“Delia has been an active member of our volunteer workforce, fence judging and volunteering at lots of our events in the southwest, and has had children who have entered and been involved in our pony club system, so she’s has a lot of knowledge about the goods and the bads of how our system works,” Williams said. “She’ll be of great value and, most importantly, she will bring back, when she comes home, new ways of thinking and doing things differently. That’s really important. We have to think outside the box and really listen and have experience in how other organizations work because we’ve all got great ideas. We just don’t do very well at sharing them.”

Delia has already begun her USEA volunteer-registration process and plans to work at The Maryland Horse Trials at Loch Moy Farm in Adamstown and a few others. She’s looking forward to experiencing the registration and training process for jump judges in the U.S. and leveraging both what she knows of English practices, and what she learns about U.S. standards, to help volunteers in both places.

“Both nations are heavily involved in health and safety,” Brandwood said. “That’s a key thing for me. As a fence judge, you’re the first one on the scene. I can bring what we do in the U.K. and then see what they do in the USA. There are things to learn from both sides.”

She also hopes to impart what she observes about the accessibility of eventing in the United States with leaders at BE. 

“I think that in the USA, there are definitely more competitions open to unaffiliated riders,” she said. “In the U.K., you must be a British Eventing member (to compete). I’m certain that something Rosie wants to do is make British Eventing more accessible to older riders and up-and-coming riders. I think the sport needs to be more accessible to everyone.”

Encouraging riders at the grass-roots levels, including young and adult competitors, and anyone who’s simply interested in learning more about the sport, is important in both countries. 

“For both organizations, upcoming eventers are a primary focus,” Burk said. “Sometimes that gets lost in the messaging. But 90% of eventers in the U.S. are at the entry level of the sport. We need to have, across the sport, a better concept of how to bring people into the sport and not lose them.”

At the other end of the competitive spectrum, Burk also hopes to leverage the new partnership to make European travel and competition more attainable and comfortable for riders with the potential to represent the U.S. on senior teams. Often, he said, the relocation process can be eye-opening, as riders try to figure out how to assimilate into the British eventing world. Recipients of the USEA’s Wilton Fair Fund grant as ones who will benefit from the added support. The Wilton Fair grants, established in 2017, award up to $100,000 annually to riders age 29 and younger who have not yet ridden on a senior team. Recipients often use the grants to relocate to Europe, where they gain international exposure through training and competition. 

Jenny Caras, 29, received a Wilton Fair grant in 2023 and relocated from Marietta, Georgia, to England a year ago. 

“The Wilton Fair grant has pretty much changed my life,” she said. “It gave me the opportunity to come over to England and base and compete. That’s something I wouldn’t have been able to do without it.” 

Caras, who has a string of six horses with her in England, will compete with Sommersby, a 13-year-old Mecklenberg gelding (Sergeant Pepper— D’Mademoiselle, D’Olympic) she owns with Jerry Hollis, at the Luhmühlen CCI5*-L (Germany) this week.  She said there’s been a “learning curve” with figuring out which shows to go to in England, given the country’s myriad shows available on any given weekend, as well as the British competition entry system. “It all works a bit differently in America,” she said.

Helping smooth out those learning curves is another facet of the new collaboration. Williams said she and Burk are in talks to formalize an exchange program for riders “in particular age groups who will be able to visit both countries and get experience of what it’s like to live away from home, be independent, and experience the competitive environment of other nations while also being under the umbrella of our national governing bodies so that we can make sure that they have somebody to turn to if they need it.”

Home to the longest-running five-star events in the world, Great Britain is the international hub of upper-level eventing. While Williams hopes BE can benefit from some of the USEA’s modern technological innovations, Burk hopes to tap into some of Great Britain’s decades of institutional knowledge and prowess through the collaboration.

“I’ve always been very impressed with British horsemanship, and we mimic a lot of it here, but I’m really interested for them to come and evaluate our system and give their impression of where there are gaps,” he said. “The British bench is very deep right now. I know we have the talent in the U.S. to have a similarly deep bench. I think there’s a lot we can learn from each other.”