Many nations on 6 continents participate in international equestrian competitions. The Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI) founded in 1921 is the governing body that oversees these competitions including the World Equestrian Games. FEI disciplines include: Jumping, Dressage and Para Dressage, Eventing, Driving and Para Driving, Endurance, Vaulting and Reining.
The goal of the FEI is to maintain competitions that uphold the FEI standards of Equality, Fair Play, Complicity with the Animal, Respect for the Environment and Respect for the Horse. Regulations and the approval process for competitions are determined by 7 stakeholder groups that include the FEI President (HRH Princess Haya) and National Federations (there are 132). Many National Federation have additional equestrian sports that are not recognized internationally. For example, the United States Equestrian Federation gives out annual awards for events that include Saddleseat Equitation and Western Pleasure. It's the responsibility of these national federations to choose teams to represent their nation for the World Equestrian Games, Olympics and other international competitions.
The French national equestrian federation, called Federation Francaise d'Equitation, governs many competitions not recognized by the FEI. Two that I find really interesting are a sport called TREC and Skijoring with horses.
TREC competitions involve four separate components. The TREC acronym stands for 'Techniques de Randonnee Equestre de Competition', which roughly translates to Techniques Hiking Equestrian Competition. The first test is where a rider must plan a course along a marked route using a topographic map of a course between 12-50km. Twenty minutes before the competition starts, management reviews the planned course and during the riding of the course, there are unknown checkpoints. Efficiency in route planning and long distance ride management is tested here. The second part of the competition involves obstacles that may be encountered on a trail. They can include anything from fording a creek, stairs, a series of rapid jumps, opening a gate and obstacles where the rider must dismount from their horse and complete the obstacle themselves. During the third phase, riders meet with the officials and describe what tack they're using. They take off their saddle bags and discuss any first aid supplies they carry and why they use the equipment that they do. Lastly, a dressage test completes the competition. The dressage test focuses on the ability of the rider to control their mount. As someone who enjoys hiking, this seems like quite the fun competition!
Having lived in Alaska for a little bit, I usually think of skijoring as a sport where a dog pulls a skier along behind him. Skijoring with horses is very similar except the four legged mammal doing the pulling weighs 1000 pounds more! Races can be held on snow, grass or sand and are held on a circular race track. Below is a video that explains a little bit about this sport. Most of the time the horses are riderless but I did see a few videos where there were riders. If you're an adrenaline junkie, this may be the sport for you!
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There are a lot more very neat competitions in the 132 national federations recognized by the FEI. We'll definitely take a look at some more in future posts!
Once used solely for military purposes, radar technology is now an indispensable tool meteorologists use in forecasting. Radars send out a beam of energy, which is returned to the radar when it comes into contact with a rain drop, hail stone, snow flake or any other falling precipitation. The amount of energy returned to the radar and the time it takes for the energy to return indicate the type and intensity of the precipitation. Recently, many radars around the globe are being upgraded to something called dual-polarization. This means that 2 beams of energy are sent out simultaneously. One is oriented in the horizontal and one in the vertical. France currently has 17 radars upgraded to dual-polarization.
Meteo France has 27 radars total. Twenty-four of the radars return information from a 100km radius and three of the radars from a radius of 60km. Most of France (seen in the image below) has radar coverage with many areas having overlapping coverage. This overlapping coverage is helpful in seeing storms and areas of precipitation from multiple angles. (numbers from http://www.meteofrance.com/accueil)
The shaded blue/red/green areas show the extent of where data can be seen from the points in the middle of each circle (radar's location). The smaller green shaded areas are radars that are in test phase and the ones with a smaller radius of 60km. 'Dpol' shows which radars have been updated to dual-polarization!
The Meteo France website shows a looping composite image (combination of all radars). At the time this post was written, an area of rain was moving to the south from the northeastern coast across central France. These radars are going to play in integral role during the 2 weeks of the World Equestrian Games!
