United States Eventing Association

The historic Commonwealth Dressage & Combined Training Association (CDCTA) Fall Horse Trials is quickly approaching. With less than a month left before the September 11 USEF/USEA recognized event, entries for the trails are sadly lower than expected. With the price of gas and diesel, work schedules, and less time for horses the volunteer-based organization understands the struggles surrounding the eventing industry. Those that are interested in competing at the CDCTA Fall Horse Trials need to get their entries in by Tuesday, August 23.

CDCTA has been running recognized horse trials in Northern Virginia for over 30 years. As an entirely volunteer based organization, our competitions are completely dependent upon the generous hands that come forward to assist. The CDCTA Horse Trials strives to be a fun and inclusive event with forward riding, confidence-building tracks offered for all levels.

The CDCTA Horse Trials is uniquely run on a private farm that they are fortunate enough to lease for events twice a year. For both the Spring and Fall events, the entire show venue is built from the ground up from open hay fields. Twice a year the CDCTA volunteers move each and every portable cross-country jump onto the course and prepare the tracks with flags and roping. Without the use of public lands, the leasing and cross-country jump moving costs are a very large part of the CDTA’s budget for the trials, an expense that countless other local events do not have funds to spend for.

Due to the vast overhead involved with running the event, CDCTA is eagerly awaiting the entry deadline to ensure that there are sufficient entries to run the event. Unfortunately, there is the possibility that if not enough people come forward to participate the event will have to be canceled due to lack of funds. While CDCTA is a non-profit organization, they must be fiscally responsible to the organization and need to be close to covering expenses for the competition to continue.

The CDCTA is doing everything in its power to host the Fall Horse Trials for the competitors, but in order to do so, they are in need of a significant number of additional entries.

Please get your entries in, and any questions regarding the CDCTA Horse Trials, can be emailed to cdctaht.sec@gmail.com.