To me, the primary duty of the President of the AERC, along with handling the day-to-day public relations, corporate matters, and administrative requirements, is to provide the association with the vision for the future of endurance in North America and the organizational foundation upon which to achieve this vision.

I believe a foundation is more than just making sure the balance sheet looks good at the end of the year. It means that the President should ensure a viable, energetic, empowered structure upon which to build the future and also a generally accepted plan for how to reach the goals which have been specified by the membership.

While providing a plan for the future may sound simple, what I have come to be extremely aware of in my 30 years in this sport is the extreme diversity of the people we know of as endurance riders. There is constantly a plethora of issues which are raised as being of the utmost of importance and immediacy. Every rider rightfully feels their issues are the most important. The difficult part is to find what is important to all endurance riders. What I have tried to do is to distill all of the issues down to just the very basic common needs of every endurance rider. I actually narrowed the list down to just four needs:

Horses: Cannot do a ride without a horse to ride.

Ride managers: Cannot do a ride if nobody puts one on.

Trails: Cannot ride around the parking lot 600 times.

Veterinarians/Welfare issues: Cannot do an endurance ride without adequate concern for the safety and welfare of the horses.

Now there are a lot more needs than just these four, and each one of these encompasses a whole lot of specific details, but basically every endurance rider at every distance at every level needs these four things. While you can go trail riding with just a horse and a trail, you cannot put on an endurance ride without also having a ride manager and a vet. We can all argue which is most important, but without any one, there cannot be an endurance ride.

I believe it is up to AERC to ensure these basics are provided to the membership; that is, except for the horse. Getting a good horse is up to you. The other basics are up to AERC through its members. While in the past it was possible for the board to spend hours debating whether a ride of 153 total miles required special sanctioning, I believe that the vast majority of the boardÕs efforts should be and are now spent focused on providing the infrastructure and support necessary to encourage ride managers to put on rides and vets to vet rides, on the welfare of endurance horses, and on the creation and preservation of trails for use in conditioning and trails for use in competition.

This past year the AERC board of directors has been very focused on these basics. It has been very gratifying to see the board move away from a single-issue focus and move toward a whole-organization approach. A lot has been accomplished. You have heard frequently about achievements in horse welfare, trails, and ride manager issues (e.g., insurance for rides).

The board will spend much of this coming convention discussing and planning how they can even better prioritize and focus their efforts in a way that reflects the importance of these basic needs of endurance rides. The board is listening to your input while at rides and all the time via emails. Please continue to comment in order to help them plan how to make AERC even better for you in the decade to come.

"To finish is to win."