The American Eventing Championships, which have been held for the last two years at the Carolina Horse Park and will be there again in September, will move to the Lamplight Equestrian Center In Wayne, Ill., for 2007 to 2009. Officials from the U.S. Eventing Association announced the decision today (May 16).

USEA officials award the AEC to organizers on a three-year basis.

Lamplight Equestrian Center is co-owned by Tom Moxley and Stephen Cooper and is the site of more than 20 equestrian competitions each year. These competitions include two horse trials, seven regional dressage shows, and six AA-rated hunter/jumper shows. Lamplight\’s two-week Equifest show series hosts more than 1,000 horses each week.

The AEC is expected to continue to take place in September at this new location.

For the AEC, horses will be stabled at Lamplight, where dressage and show jumping will take place. The cross-country phase will be run across the street at the Du Page County Forest Preserve\’s Pratt Wayne Woods Equestrian Area, which currently has six levels of cross-country courses, beginner novice through advanced, on more than 600 acres.

Katie Lindsay, who currently organizes the Maui Jim Horse Trials there, has been named the new AEC organizer. She\’s been an organizer for 25 years, starting with the American Continental Young Riders Three-Day Event Championships in 1981. She introduced intermediate level eventing to Area IV in 1982, and through the sponsorship of the Centel Corporation and later Sprint, she added the advanced level a decade later. Lindsay, a just-retired eventing technical delegate and former member of the USEA Board of Directors, has developed an expert team of volunteers over those years.

“I have some huge shoes to fill,” Lindsay said. “The Carolina Horse Park crew gave life to this competition, and I just hope I can live up to their standard of excellence. I\’m excited by the challenge and look forward to introducing Midwestern eventing to the rest of the country and to working with the great USEA staff to make it all happen.”

The inaugural American Eventing Championships ran at the Carolina Horse Park, in Raeford, N.C., in 2004. The third renewal will be there on Sept. 20-24.

“Lefreda Williams, Gwen Parkins, and the rest of the Carolina Horse Park staff and volunteers have done a first-rate job launching the AEC,” said Jo Whitehouse, the USEA\’s chief executive officer. “Without them, and the support of the Carolina Horse Park board, the AEC would likely have been one of those great ideas that withers on the vine.”

Added USEA President Kyra Stuart, “We owe them so much for helping us make the inaugural AEC series such a destination event. We went into this project with the plan to move the event to a new host site every three years, and as much as we will miss the Carolina Horse Park, we feel it is important that we follow through on that goal. But we hope that Lefreda and her team will consider hosting the AEC again in the future, since we would love to return to North Carolina.”