Source: Kentucky Horse Park

 Save the dates!  The Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games at the Kentucky Horse Park are now officially scheduled for September 25 to October 10, 2010. 

            The official name of the games has also been finalized: "Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games." 

            "We'll have a great deal more information to share in the coming weeks," said John Nicholson, Executive Director of the Kentucky Horse Park and President of the World Games 2010 Foundation, Inc., "but for the time-being, we want to get this on everyone's calendars and let all of the loyal clients and supportive constituents of the Kentucky Horse Park know exactly what we're doing."  

            Jack Kelly, CEO of the World Games 2010 Foundation, Inc., observed, "We want to do what's best for the horses and be a good neighbor at the same time, so we factored a number of considerations into the equation and arrived at the end of September.  A major issue for us was a concern about Pyroplasmosis, a disease spread to horses by dog ticks.  These ticks go dormant after Labor Day, so we wanted to eliminate the threat by working with the United States Department of Agriculture to ascertain the best time for Pyroplasmosis-positive horses to arrive from other countries.  These dates will resolve that concern.  European horses are also not as accustomed to our hot summer temperatures, so we pushed the dates back a bit in the hope of hitting ideal temperatures for the horses to compete." 

            He continued, "We also looked at some long-established events in the area, such as the September yearling sales and the Keeneland fall race meet, then set our dates to cause as little disruption to their events as possible.  We will only overlap the last three days of the sales and the first two days of the race meet. 

            "Finally, we had to consider hotel availability.  With several hundred thousand visitors coming into the area for the games, the local hotels are crucial to our success.  We consulted with them and concluded that these dates would offer the largest number of hotel rooms, and should only overlap one University of Kentucky home football game." 

            For more information on the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, click on www.alltechfeigames.com.

Founded in 1973, the United States Dressage Federation is a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to education, recognition of achievement, and promotion of dressage. For more information about USDF membership or programs, visit www.usdf.org, email [email protected], or call (859) 971-2277.