Endurance: long rides, checked loop by loop.

A note on scope

This page explains the structure of endurance in principle. It does not describe how vets examine horses, and it says nothing about treatment or medication. Any question about a horse's health or fitness to compete is for a veterinarian. We could not read the FEI Endurance Rules directly, because the FEI's website refused our requests, so the rule points below come from research papers and from US Equestrian's outline of the 2026 FEI rule changes.

Loops and vet gates

A 2020 study in the Equine Veterinary Journal (Bennet, Parkin, Hayes and Friend) describes the format. FEI endurance rides of 80 to 160 km are divided into three to six stages called loops. At the end of every loop, vets inspect each horse and record their findings on a vet card.

A 2016 paper in Frontiers in Physiology (Younes, Robert, Barrey and Cottin) calls the inspection at the end of each phase a vet gate, and says heart rate is the main thing assessed there. Citing the 2016 FEI Endurance Rules, the authors say a horse fails the vet gate if its heart rate is still above 64 beats per minute after 20 minutes of recovery, and that failing means the horse leaves the competition. That threshold comes from the 2016 rules; we could not confirm whether it is the same in 2026.

Three further points reached us only through search summaries, so they are unconfirmed:

• Ride schedules for FEI one-star and two-star rides in Dubai from 2022 to 2025 are reported to list a 64 bpm maximum at every vet gate, a set time within which the horse must be presented (15 or 20 minutes), and a compulsory hold before the next loop. These are organisers' documents, not the rulebook.
• Horse and Hound is reported to explain that the clock keeps running until the horse is presented at the vet gate, so how quickly that happens affects placings.
• A HorseSport.com championship report is reported to say that results are decided on time, but a horse must also pass the final veterinary examination to be classified.

What the research found

Bennet and colleagues, 2020

The study covered 3,213 horse starts at international (CEI) rides worldwide in 2014. It found that abnormal gait and high heart rate recorded at vet gates were repeatedly linked to the horse failing to qualify at a later loop.

de Mira and colleagues, 2020

Writing in Comparative Exercise Physiology, the authors looked at a cardiac recovery index used at vet gates, which compares the heart rate when the horse is presented with a second reading taken a minute later. They analysed 972 inspections at three venues and found that time spent waiting at the gate was not significantly associated with heart rate or with the index.

The 2026 FEI rule changes

US Equestrian's outline of the 2026 FEI rule changes reports these for endurance:

• Average speed (Art 838.1): from 1 January 2026, a combination's average speed is calculated over all completed loops, including a loop that ends in "Failed to Qualify"; incomplete loops do not count. This definition is used for the speed restrictions of 21 km/h under Art 837.1 and 20 km/h under Art 839.2.1.
• Catastrophic injury: the 2026 rules add a definition of catastrophic injury.
• Tack: tack and equipment requirements move out of the endurance rules into the central FEI Tack and Equipment document.
• Headgear: the FEI General Regulations (Art 140.1, 2026) make properly fastened protective headgear mandatory while riding anywhere on the showground, in endurance as in other disciplines.

Search summaries of 2026 event schedules cite the FEI Endurance Rules, 12th edition, effective 1 January 2024 with updates effective 1 January 2026. We could not open those documents, so the edition is unconfirmed.

Who runs endurance nationally

Endurance is one of the disciplines national federations list alongside the FEI's others: Endurance GB is a member body of British Equestrian, Equestrian Canada lists endurance among its disciplines, and Equestrian Australia groups it with driving and vaulting as an FEI discipline. Welfare rules and horse health, as the bodies publish them, are covered in the safety section, including heat and competition and horse welfare and the FEI.