September 8, 2009 -- The organizers of the Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials and the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event have been able to avoid a clash of dates in the future.
Badminton announced earlier this year that it would be running over the weekend of the May Day bank holiday from 2010, with cross-country day on Sunday and show jumping on the holiday Monday. Unfortunately, this very occasionally clashes with the traditional Kentucky date, the cross-country for which has been the last Saturday in April since 1987.
It has now been agreed that in 2011 Badminton will run one week earlier, April 22-25, which, being the Easter weekend, will still allow the event to climax on a bank holiday Monday. In 2016, Kentucky in turn has agreed to run a week earlier than it otherwise would so that Badminton can maintain their holiday Monday schedule.
Both event directors, Hugh Thomas and Janie Atkinson, salute the agreement as demonstrating the good relationship between the leading international events and being in the best interests of the sport of eventing, which would not have been well-served by a clash of two of the three Rolex Grand Slam events, both HSBC FEI Classic Four-Star Events.
Event dates until 2016 are now as follows:
| Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials | Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event | |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | April 30-May 3 | April 22-25 |
| 2011 | April 22-25 | April 28-May 1 |
| 2012 | May 4-7 | April 26-29 |
| 2013 | May 3-6 | April 25-28 |
| 2014 | May 2-5 | April 24-27 |
| 2015 | May 1-4 | April 23-26 |
| 2016 | April 29-May 2 | April 21-24 |
