At the U.S. Equestrian Federation board of directors meeting on Feb. 23, the organization took several actions towards changing the process of competition licensing.

The federation office will no longer issue competition licenses extending beyond a one-year term, allowing the board time to evaluate the mileage rules and the criteria for issuing and renewing competition license agreements. Existing multi-year license agreements will be honored.

The board requested an immediate assessment regarding the enforcement of show standards, safety standards and reliable reporting from licensed officials.

The board considered and adopted a recommendation from the Competition Classification Task Force introduced at the 2015 USEF Annual Meeting (Ky.) to remove the application of the mileage rule from FEI five-star jumper competitions with no national classes, as it believes this is consistent with the federation’s goal of growing the visibility of the sport. These competitions will be classified as Special Competitions under the federation rules, which are subject to board approval.

The board also considered but did not adopt the other recommendation of the Competition Classification Task Force that would lift mileage protection against a jumper Level 6 competition each sixth week of a series as it did not believe it went far enough to meet the goal of improved fairness in competition licensing. Instead, the federation will draft a proposal to amend the current mileage rules consistent with the directive of the board.

“[The mileage rule] issues have come up again and again,” said USEF President Chrystine Tauber. “Last year I appointed a special classification task force to look at a few specific things. Once the board got into that and started looking at some of the other things that impact this discussion, it became clear it needed a much broader look at the whole system. Why wouldn’t we just take a much bigger look at the whole system of our mileage process instead of making little tweaks?”

A Mileage Rule Revision Task Force, which will be co-chaired by USEF Vice President Elisabeth Goth and U.S. Hunter Jumper Association President Bill Moroney, has been appointed to evaluate all aspects of competition licensing. Moroney was not available for interview before press time.

In the interim, any organizer interested in hosting a Level 6 jumper competition against an existing competition should utilize the existing mileage exemption process, which does not limit such requests to particular weeks.

“I think that we have a lot of processes in place, like the Special Competitions and mileage exemption process, and we’re working to strengthen and clarify those things so people really understand what their current options are,” said Tauber. “We’re looking into whether that can be done differently or better, but what we’re trying to do is really make it more efficient and effective for both the federation and competition management. It’s just really taking a thorough look at what needs to be done. These mileage things have been in place for a long time, and they need to be looked at again.”