WEG - Eventing is the second discipline on the Schedule
The second discipline featured in the FEI World Equestrian Games news service is Eventing. Competitions will take place according to the following schedule:
Dressage: Thursday 24 and Friday 25 August - 9h00 to 17h00
Cross Country: Saturday 26 August - 9h00 to 16h00
Jumping: Sunday 27 August - 14h00 to 17h15
The estimated number of competitors is 95 from approximately 25 countries, which is an improvement compared to previous WEG. For the record, 88 riders from 22 countries participated in in Stockholm; 93 in The Hague; 91 riders from 23 countries participated Rome, and 80 riders from 21 counties competed in Jerez de la Frontera.
Eventing - detailed preview
EVENTING breaks new ground in Aachen where, for the first time, the World Championships will be run without steeple chase. This version of the sport, introduced at top international level shortly before the 2004 Olympic Games, dispenses with the two sections of roads and tracks and the steeplechase that for decades traditionally preceded the cross-country.
It will also mark an important innovation for the famous Soers showground, long renowned as a centre of excellence for show jumping, dressage and driving. The organisers were faced with the massive undertaking of building from scratch a brand-new cross-country course. Fortunately they had at their disposal a conveniently situated square kilometre of land adjacent to the main stadium on the Soerser Weg, so the event will be very much at the heart of the Games.
The man with the onerous task of designing the 30-fence course, which will involve some 45 actual jumping efforts, is Germany’s own Rudiger Schwarz. The 56-year-old former international rider, winner of a world team silver medal back in 1982, is now a highly successful trainer of junior and young riders and, since 1998, has gained a reputation as an international course designer.
He has promised a true World Championship track that will test the best riders and horses, as well as offering slightly less technical but more time-consuming alternatives for the more cautious. The lay-out of the track is guaranteed to provide a thrilling experience for the crowd. It will include three water obstacles and several other technically difficult complexes as well as the usual smattering of straightforward “let-up” fences. The course will be 6,270 metres in length - slightly shorter than Badminton - and must be ridden at the same speed as Badminton (570 metres per minute). Riders incur time penalties at the rate of 0.4 of a penalty added for every second they take over the optimum time.
The Games bring together the finest riders and horses from the world’s most successful eventing nations - headed by the reigning champions Jean Teulere and Espoir de la Mare from France – as well as individuals from countries unable to muster a full team. A team comprises four members (though it is permitted to run only three). The three best riders’ final total scores count for the team classification for medals, the worst being discarded. In addition each nation may run two more individuals, giving a maximum of six riders/horses per nation. Team and individual riders compete in one and the same competition.
Four continents will be represented, with seventeen nations expected to field teams and another 10 running one or more individuals. A total of around 95 runners is expected.
Among nations fielding full teams will be the three “big guns” of the world stage, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and the main European contenders, France, Germany and Great Britain.
The USA are the current team title holders, but in the previous four runnings of the Games it was New Zealand who dominated, with two victories to Britain’s one. Overall, though, since Ireland won the very first World Championships back in 1966, it is the British who have the best record at this level, with four team gold medals compared with the USA and New Zealand’s two apiece. France, Ireland and Canada have each been champions on just one occasion.
This time Frenchman Jean Teulere is not alone in considering the Germans to be the ones who will take all the beating. They will certainly be hungry to make amends for their Athens debacle, when Bettina Hoy’s last-day error (she crossed the start-line twice in the show jumping) cost her and her compatriots both individual and team gold medals.
The German riders have embraced the format of the sport without steeple chase as well as anyone. They were in tip-top form at the only four-star event run on their home soil, at Luhmuhlen in June. Bettina on Ringwood Cockatoo finished a close runner-up to Frank Ostholt (Air Jordan 2), while fellow WEG nominated riders Dirk Schrade, Andreas Dibowski, Hinrich Romeike and Stefani Thompson all finished in the top nine. Ingrid Klimke and Sleep Late, individual bronze medallists at last year’s FEI European Championship and runners-up at Badminton this spring, will also be among the favourites.
The USA’s most deadly weapon is, once again, the combination of Kimberly Severson and the British-bred Winsome Adante, three times winner of the Rolex Kentucky event, and team bronze and individual silver medallists at the Athens Olympic Games.
However, the one that Kim, Bettina, Ingrid and the rest have to fear most is likely to be Bettina’s husband, Australian Andrew Hoy, winner at Kentucky and Badminton this year and, after a quarter of a century in the sport, riding better than ever. Andrew and his compatriots have won Olympic gold on three consecutive occasions (1992, 1996 and 2000) but the Aussies have yet to score at the FEI World Equestrian Games. This could well be the year they set the record straight.
The New Zealanders look like having it all to do this time, while the French, runners-up in the last three World Games and in the 2005 Europeans, are always difficult to assess because they tend to compete mainly on home soil, the result of having insufficient top-class horses to run at events such as Kentucky and Badminton. After being side-lined all last season following a fall during training, when he broke his pelvis, 52-year-old Jean Teulere is back to full fitness. Were he to succeed in retaining the title he won in Jerez, he would be only the third rider to win two World Championships - American Bruce Davidson took back-to-back titles in 1974 and 1978 (on two different horses), and New Zealander Blyth Tait and Ready Teddy were victorious in 1990 and again in 1998.
The British, who have reigned supreme in Europe for so many years - team victory at Blenheim last September was their sixth consecutive European Championship title and their 19th overall - will also be among the favourites for a medal despite having lost one of their chief hopes, Pippa Funnell. Her proposed ride Primmore’s Pride, previous winner of the world’s three toughest non-championship events at Lexington, Badminton and Burghley, has been withdrawn with a suspected leg problem. Funnell has been replaced by championship debutante Sharon Hunt and Tankers Town, who ran well to finish sixth at Badminton this spring.
The British squad is a mix of the very experienced and total newcomers to championship riding. Mary King, 43, team gold medallist in The Hague in 1994, is the senior member. She rides Call Again Cavalier, the former mount of Caroline Pratt, who was so tragically killed at Burghley two years ago. William Fox-Pitt, the next most experienced, will be among the individual favourites with the part-Arab Tamarillo, winner of team gold and individual silver medals at last year’s Europeans. New to the team are 24-year-old Oliver Townend (third at Badminton 2006) and Daisy Dick (11th in the Europeans 2005). Daisy must be the only international event rider to have a Master’s degree in zoology from Oxford University.
Although lady riders have not yet managed to grasp the individual gold since the introduction of the FEI World Equestrian Games in 1990, three British women took the pre-Games world title, Mary Gordon-Watson (1970), Lucinda Green (1982) and Virginia Leng (1986), and the victorious British team in 1994 at The Hague, was an all-female one.
Among the countries unable to field whole teams, Finland probably has the best chance of success. Of the 100,000 Finns who ride, 93% are female, so it no surprise that their top eventer is a woman, the highly successful Piia Pantsu, with Ypaja Karuso. This pair were bronze medallists in Jerez in 2002.
Samantha Albert will be Jamaica’s sole representative in the entire Games, while Pepo Puch, who has been competing at international level for several seasons, fills a similar role for Croatia. For the first time ever Belarus is represented at the World Eventing Championships, their two entries being Iryna Lis and Svetlana Yevshchik.
The scoring system at the World Championships is the same as those for other international events. In the dressage test, designed to demonstrate the horse’s balance, suppleness and free forward movement, each movement is marked out of 10 by each of the three judges. Perfect 10s are rare. Four lots of 10 further marks are also available for the quality of the horse’s paces, his impulsion (desire to move forward), his attention and obedience and for the rider’s skill. The judges’ marks are averaged and then converted to penalties.
On the cross-country a first refusal, run-out or circle at a fence incurs 20 penalties, a second at the same fence incurs 40 penalties, a third at the same fence results in elimination. An overall fourth refusal at any of the fences incurs elimination, as does the fall of a horse at an obstacle. If a rider falls, they are given 65 penalties and are allowed to remount, but a second rider fall results in elimination. The height of a cross-country fence may not exceed 1.20m (1.40m for a brush fence).
In the final day’s show jumping 4 penalties are given for each fence knocked down and for a first refusal. A second refusal, jumping a fence in the wrong order or a horse-fall all incur elimination. A first rider fall incurs 8 penalties, a second fall brings elimination. Exceeding the time allowed results in 1 penalty per second.
In eventing, as in the world of football, it has become common practice to appoint non-national coaches. The British have enjoyed great success during the past few years under the tutelage of Sweden’s Yogi Breisner; Ireland appointed another Swede, Lars Christenssen, earlier this year to try to improve their championship results, and the Germans have a British coach, international eventer and former Olympic dressage rider Christopher Bartle.
However, the trainer who most looks like being pulled in several directions at once during the first week of the Games is Mark Phillips, a world team gold medallist himself back in 1970 and now the successful coach of the United States squad. His wife, Sandy, has been selected for the British dressage team, while Zara, the daughter from his first marriage to HRH The Princess Royal, will be riding her 2005 European Champion Toytown with the British eventing team.
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Past World Champions in Eventing (Individual)
1966 Burghley: Carlos Moratorio on Chalan (ARG)
1970 Punchestown: Mary Gordon Watson on Cornishman V (GBR)
1974 Burghley: Bruce Davidson on Irish Cap (USA)
1978 Lexington: Bruce Davidson on Night Tango (USA)
1982 Luhmühlen: Lucinda Green on Regal Realm (GBR)
1986 Gawler: Virginia Leng on Priceless (GBR)
1990 WEG Stockholm: Blyth Tait on Messiah (NZL)
1994 WEG The Hague: Vaughan Jefferis on Bounce (NZL)
1998 WEG Rome: Blyth Tait on Ready Teddy (NZL)
2002 WEG Jerez: Jean Teulère Espoir de la Mare (FRA)
Past World Champions in Eventing (Team)
IRL - 1966
GBR - 1970
USA - 1974
CAN - 1978
GBR - 1982
GBR - 1986
NZL- 1990
GBR - 1994
NZL - 1998
USA – 2002
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