FEI Awards 2024
Monday 14 October 2024
It’s that time of the year again - the FEI Awards have returned for 2024, with the Longines FEI Rising Star, Peden Bloodstock FEI Best Athlete, Cavalor FEI Best Groom, and FEI Inspire Award up for grabs ahead of a glittering and glamourous awards ceremony.
There are 16 impressive candidates from nine countries nominated across the four award categories this year. They include Olympic and world champions, emerging talents, hard-working grooms, living legends, inspirational volunteers and pioneering Federations. The winners will be announced at this year’s FEI Awards Gala presented by Longines, in Abu Dhabi (UAE) on 13 November. Great Britain have been shortlisted for three nominations across two of the five categories:
Peden Bloodstock FEI Best Athlete :
Laura Collett – Eventing
Laura Collett MBE was part of the British team that defended its Eventing team title from Tokyo 2020 (the first gold medal for Great Britain in eventing since Munich 1972), and, in doing so, gave Great Britain their first team gold medal of Paris 2024. Laura and her horse London 52, also broke the Olympic Dressage record and went on to win the individual bronze medal. What you could not tell during these special moments is that Laura was unable to see through her right eye – a hindrance that makes her story one of the more remarkable of many remarkable comebacks. Lucky to still be alive, let alone compete, Laura’s Olympic success comes 11 years after a terrible accident. While competing at an event, she fell off her horse, which then landed on top of her. Suffering multiple injuries including a punctured lung, lacerated liver, fractured shoulder, and two broken ribs, Laura was put in an induced coma for several days. She also lost her vision in her right eye after damage to her optic nerve. Winning medals in Paris was a dream come true for Laura and also a reward to all her friends and family who supported her on her road to recovery.
FEI Inspire:
Lucinda Green for The Lucinda Green Academy
Lucinda is one of the best eventing riders of all time. She is world and double European Champion, Olympic team silver medallist, dual Burghley, and a record six-time Badminton winner. Lucinda has been teaching riders from grassroots to Olympic level around the world since the early 1980s. The last four years has seen tremendous online activity around the Lucinda Green XC Academy. She demonstrates her great teaching skills and brings other knowledgeable people from around the world to help her members develop their horse management as well as their training and competing. Lucinda has enormous passion for teaching and promoting eventing in Great Britain and across the world. All her life she has fostered a paradox in her training and riding, saying that the horse must be allowed to think for himself while still listening to his rider. Her ‘Greenprint’ is made up of her fundamental principles, established over 50 years of competing and teaching, that help athletes and trainers to do exactly that. She feels that cross country must remain the heartbeat of the sport. If a similar balance of the other two phases with cross country is not maintained, then eventing could change into a combined training competition of dressage and show jumping with an "exhibition" cross country. As such, she believes it would lose its ‘USP’ (Unique Selling Point) and become a second-rate sport. Currently Lucinda is investigating ideas of how to develop a programme that will help iron out horse abuse that has recently been highlighted. She believes it is such a difficult nettle to grasp that it has taken exposure of abuse at the highest level to stress the necessity for a line in the sand now to be more emphatically drawn.
Georgina Urwin – Summerfield Stables
Georgina is the director of Summerfield Stables – Horses in the Community, a charity in Birmingham providing access to horses for those who would otherwise not have this opportunity. Founded in 1970 by Georgina’s mother, Roslyn Tedd-Urwin, Summerfield is now the permanent home to 33 rescued and reschooled horses and provides weekly lessons to over 200 children. Georgina is a true champion of inclusion, breaking down barriers and making riding accessible to everyone. Last year Summerfield Stables expanded to a second site to provide participants with the opportunity to enhance their career options by gaining increased riding experience and the opportunity to explore recognised qualifications. It was none other than the indefatigable Georgina who built the new site herself with a small team of volunteers – putting in the fences and doing the groundwork with the required machinery. In 2024, Georgina took things a step further, developing a partnership with the British Dressage's pilot urban centre initiative, and providing a group of riders with the opportunity to try out dressage and develop certain skills. Georgina’s belief in horses to unite, heal and inspire is remarkable, as is her incredible generosity. Georgina's passion is only matched by her tenacity to bring horses to everyone, no matter their background and position. This tenacity is underlined by the fact that Georgina also somehow finds the time to be a part time A-level philosophy teacher – a vital source of income for her considering the running of the stables and teaching is a voluntary unpaid role!
