The United States Equestrian Team (USET) has changed the location of its Dressage Olympic Selection Trials, scheduled for the weekends of May 13-14 and May 20-21.

The trials, which will also serve as the State Line Tack/USET Grand Prix Dressage Championship, presented by Rio Suite Hotel and Casino, had been scheduled to take place at the USET Olympic Training Center in Gladstone, NJ. However, they will now be held at Walter and Mary Anne McPhail’s White Fences Showgrounds in Loxahatchee, FL.

Recent evidence that West Nile Virus (WNV) has survived the winter in the Northeast and will likely persist this year has raised concerns about possible restrictions on travel to Europe for horses that have been in New Jersey. New Jersey is generally regarded as a state with strong mosquito control and there is no actual evidence that horses in New Jersey are at risk. Still, USET officials feel that the possibility that Europe may not accept horses coming out of the state of New Jersey, as was the case last fall, would place undue hardship on the Team’s dressage horses which are scheduled to go to Europe immediately after the Selection Trials.

The top five finishers in the selection trials will go to Europe to compete in two selection trials between June 21 and July 23. Competitors’ scores in those three trials will be used to determine which four horse-and-rider combinations will be named to the USET’s Olympic dressage squad and which one will be the alternate