News

Natasha Baker and Sophie Wells, members of our gold medal winning team and individual silver medallists at the Tokyo Paralympics (pictured with fellow team gold medallist Sir Lee Pearson and their support crew) have been awarded OBE in the New Year’s Honours list.

Natasha and Sophie both took relatively unproven horses to Tokyo and achieved individual success as well as helping to maintain Great Britain’s unbeaten record of team title wins at every Paralympic Games since Atlanta in 1996.

The British Dressage Board of Directors has appointed an Interim Chair following the sudden passing of Chairman, Linda Whetstone, in December. (see page 6 for our obituary and tribute to Linda).

BD Finance Director Caroline Godfrey has been voted into the role of Interim Chairman unanimously by her fellow voted into the role of Interim Chairman unanimously by her fellow Board members with immediate effect, as a short-term appointment to cover the role during the fi rst half of 2022, in order to allow suffi cient time for a permanent successor to be elected by members.

Caroline has indicated she will not be putting herself forward for election for the Chairman vacancy on a permanent basis and will stand down from her interim role once the election is complete.

Congratulations to Bobby Hayler who married Andrew Wright at Drumtochty Castle in Aberdeenshire recently – a dusting of snow added sparkle to a magical day.

British Dressage is encouraging its members to help ensure greater data accuracy, traceability and biosecurity of the national equine herd by making sure their equines are listed on the Central Equine Database (CED) as a requirement of our horse registration process from 1 January 2022.

It is a requirement by law that all equines living in the UK are registered on the CED, which is designed to protect all British equines and their owners by providing the national core data that underpins essential services, such as equine lifetime traceability, biosecurity, disease surveillance and control, food chain security, animal welfare, fraud prevention and border security.

Members can check if their horses are already listed by using the National ChipChecker. Most horses with a UK passport and microchip should be listed as the PIO will have passed the info over to the CED.

We’re also strongly recommending that members sign up to Equine Register’s Digital Stable which provides a secure link to the CED. Members will be able to create their ‘Digital Stable’, which will show the data held on the CED about them and all the horses offi cially recorded as being owned by them.

As well as the data held, the Digital Stable enables users to record the location of their owned equines and their vaccination status (both current and historic).

This information supports traceability and biosecurity protecting you and your horses from infectious diseases through live targeted national disease alerts.

The need for accurate national data was highlighted by the Equine Infl uenza outbreak in 2019, which affected so many BD competitions, as well as the Equine Herpes outbreak in Europe earlier this year.

The use of Equine Register’s systems by BD Members will help keep BD competitions, competitors and equines safe and play an important role in the protection of all UK equines.

For more information and an FAQ guide, visit the BD website.

MARATHON FUNDRAISER Alice Oppenheimer ran the London Marathon in the autumn and with all the sponsorship totalled up has raised more than £21,000 for Brooke, the charity which supports working animals in developing countries. Alice would like us to thank everyone who sponsored her.

all the sponsorship totalled up has raised more than £21,000 for Brooke, the charity which supports working