Red Dragon Lite Festival of Endurance Gets Green Light

Organisers yesterday announced the traditional end of season ride, The Festival of Endurance, will go ahead on 3th and 4th October, at Royal Welsh Showground, Builth Wells, thanks to generosity of sponsors with strict changes in format to comply with Covid 19 regulations.

British Horse Feeds and The Golden Paste Company have announced their continued support for the sport with title sponsorship of this year’s “Lite” Red Dragon Festival of Endurance.

Endurance GB and the organising team have stressed their gratitude for the support of both sponsors and the hosts and underlined that the event will be run with strict changes to the format to ensure compliance with Welsh Covid 19 regulations with the focus this year being on individual sport.

The Red Dragon Festival of Endurance at Builth Wells in mid-Wales is traditionally the last big event of the endurance riding season, with competitors travelling from across the UK to the Royal Welsh Showground for the unique atmosphere and challenging riding through the Cambrian mountains.

To enable the 2020 event to go ahead, classes for this year’s “Lite” version of Red Dragon have been revised to ensure that groups of people do not meet. The classes will run over two days instead of the usual three, with distances of 25km, 36km, 42km and 48km and various combinations of these for riders wishing to take part over two days. The 22 classes will include Graded Endurance Rides and Pleasure Rides but no Competitive Endurance Rides this year.

Graded Endurance Rides are ideally suited to social distancing because they are a solitary competition where the horse and rider head out over the course on their own or in pairs and are then given a grade at the end of the ride based on the fitness of their horse. The organisers intend to make full use of the enormous 150-acre Royal Welsh Showground site to also keep groups of people apart back at the venue.

John Hudson, Ride Organiser said:

The decision to stage the ride this year has been something of a roller coaster and we are enormously grateful to our sponsors, Will I’Anson and his daughter Hattie I’Anson for all their wonderful support and encouragement in getting the ride across the line this year but also enabling us to dare to think bigger, thanks to their generous funding.  We also could not be doing this without them or the support of the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society for their approval to use the Royal Welsh Showground for our venue as we begin to emerge from the Covid 19 restrictions.

We do not yet know what Covid 19 measures will be in place in Wales in October and still need to stress that the event can only go ahead if the virus continues to remain under control and also if all riders, crews, officials and volunteers adhere to the guidelines that will be issued to all as part of the joining instructions for the event”

As ever, the inviting Red Dragon course covers grass and heather covered tracks along the plateaux with a couple of serious climbs. The route offers sections of potentially fast going with wonderful views.

Organisers are committed to ensuring that as many entries as possible will be taken, whilst ensuring that the event stays within the guidelines laid down by the Welsh Government, British Equestrian and Endurance GB. However, given what has been described as the unprecedentedly high demand for places on the ride from Endurance GB members, a cap on entries has been introduced which will be reviewed once more is known about the restrictions likely to be in place in October. Entries will be confirmed by email on a first come first served basis using the date and time of entry. Those not gaining a place will receive a full refund of all funds paid.

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Suzanne Ashton

Suzanne Ashton, Founder of Everything Horse (Est, 2012), has a BA Hons in Marketing Management and a Diploma in Equine Science. Suzanne has ridden and owned horses all her life and has twelve years of experience in marketing, writing, design, SEO, and website creation.