Lexington, KY-The United States Equestrian Federation (USEF), the United States Dressage Federation (USDF), and the United States Hunter Jumper Association (USHJA) have reached an historic understanding regarding joint membership, horse registration, competition recognition, competition data, and awards programs. This agreement will provide significantly improved service to dressage and hunter/jumper members.

On November 3, 2004, representatives from USEF, USDF, USHJA, and the United States Eventing Association (USEA) met at Salamander Farm in The Plains, VA. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss and gain support from USEF on topics of mutual concern to the three Olympic affiliates and to identify processes and procedures common to each of the organizations that could be combined or integrated for the best interests of the sport and its members. David O'Connor, John Long, and Lori Rawls represented USEF; Sam Barish, Janine Malone, and Stephan Hienzsch represented USDF; Bill Moroney, Ken Krome, and Beth Miner represented USHJA; and Kyra Stuart, Andrew Temkin, and Jo Whitehouse represented USEA.

The discussions focused primarily on four issues of common interest where some degree of duplicative programs and processes exist between the Olympic affiliates and USEF. Discussion also was held on the general topic of the formal relationship between the Federation and the affiliates and the clarity required so that the rights and obligations of the Federation and the affiliates were clearly understood.

The overall theme of the discussion was to review and combine shared processes to make them more member friendly and cost effective. The following decisions were made with implementation to begin within one year:

(1) A joint membership between USEF and USDF and USHJA individually will be created with a common membership number between the designated affiliate and USEF. Different membership levels may be created within this new framework. Horse registrations across organizations would be shared and may be centralized. Horses should ultimately have one universal number regardless of where they are registered.

(2) Each of the competitions of the USDF and USHJA will be jointly recognized by USEF. Data coming as a result of the joint recognition would be shared between USEF and the affiliate.

(3) Data generated from competitions would be shared between USEF and USDF and USHJA.

(4) Discipline-specific awards would remain the domain of USDF and USHJA. Cross-discipline awards or awards for service would remain with USEF.

The next step of discussions will deal with specific implementation plans for each of the programs. A contractual relationship between USEF and USDF and USHJA will be created in which these decisions would be memorialized as well as other rights and responsibilities of the affiliate arrangement.

The presidents of USEF, USDF, and USHJA signed a Memorandum of Understanding on November 26, 2004, to document the agreement reached on the above issues.

For more information, please contact Sarah Lane, Public Relations Manager on (859) 225-6974 or via email at slane@usef.org. USEF press releases are available on our web site - www.usef.org.