Eventing New Olympic Format Tested In Burghley (GBR)

A record crowd cheered last Sunday the winners of the 2001 Burghley Pedigree Horse Trials (CCI****), traditionally hosted on the first week end of September in Burghley (Great Britain). Event director and FEI Eventing Committee member Bill Henson offered the FEI to run this year’s event with the Olympic format according to the FEI Eventing Committee’s proposal for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. An unofficial team competition was run as part of the trials and was won by Great Britain (1) composed by Mary King, Pippa Funell, William Fox Pitt, Vere Phillipps and Graham Law. The very successful competition was won by the Kiwi trio formed by current World Champion Blyth Tait, winner on Ready Teddy, last year’s winning combination Andrew Nicholson on Mr Smiffy, and Daniel Jocelyn on Silence who scored an impressive third place.

The new format consists in running two separate show jumping competition after the cross country in order to determine the team classification, with the 25 best going into the final show jumping test (run on Sunday afternoon) for the individual results. The intention is for this formula to provide the best overall horse and rider combination result. Sunday’s show jumping test was followed with excitement by the huge public, also because it was evident that some riders would improve their performance through the final jumping test. Andrew Nicholson, who had dropped from first to third place in the first jumping round, improved his result by scoring a clear round in the final. On the other side Mary King on King Solomon III (Great Britain), who was third after the morning jumping test, dropped to fourth after she had two fences down in the final round. “I am not against the proposed Olympic formula – commented King in the final press conference – My horse simply did not jump as well as he did in the first one.”

The Chairman of the Eventing Committee, Wayne Roycroft, expressed his appreciation to Bill Henson for not only putting on this important event despite the difficult situation of renewed occurrence of the Foot and Mouth disease, but for offering the FEI the opportunity to test this format in one of world’s major event. “The results today will give the Eventing Committee confidence to proceed with finalizing the format for Athens and to secure the two sets of medals on two separate tests which will reflect a team result and from that result the best combination in the world compete for the individual title, as shown in Burghley.”

Complete results on www.burghley.co.uk