Equestrian: Medal-free after a too-easy ride

By EUGENE BINGHAM in Athens

Three-day eventing, a sport New Zealand came to be able to bank on for an Olympic medal, has been through a changing of the guard in Athens.

The retirements of several top riders and radical changes to the competition since the Sydney Olympics have left New Zealand equestrians with the prospect of being medal-less for the first time since 1984.

The format of three-day eventing has been radically altered to oblige the demands of Games organisers, who threatened to drop it as an Olympic sport.

The equestrian world debated whether the changes would affect the sport too much.

The answer to that came during the cross-country, the second part of the three-phase competition, which has traditionally been an opportunity for New Zealand riders to move up the field, leaping ahead of opponents less capable than they on challenging courses.

The course in Athens was described as a pony club jaunt.

The event also did not have the usual two pre-cross-country elements, the roads and tracks, and steeplechase, which asked questions of the horses' and riders' endurance.

The second day of the competition was turned into a 10-minute ride in which few riders failed.

Blyth Tait, the 1996 Olympic individual gold medallist and four-time Olympian, called it the softest course he had seen at the Games.

The New Zealand riders had come to Athens hoping the cross-country would be harder.

Dan Jocelyn, one of three new-comers to the team, said he had hoped it would be more of an endurance test.

Tait said he understood why the course designers had opted for a less demanding test.

"It was expected to be very hot and they couldn't get it absolutely flat - it's quite undulating out there," he said.

Mark Todd, team coach and a gold medallist at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, believed the decisions were based on a desire to appease Olympic organisers looking for sports to cull.

"It was an opportunity for the sport to have a good result here with no disasters," said Todd, who defended equestrian's place in the Olympics.

"The essence of eventing is that it's a challenge and it's an adrenalin rush, and you don't get that in basketball."

A British former world champion, Lucinda Green, said the cross-country course should test the confidence and communication between rider and horse, and how the rider was prepared to take risks.

"This Olympic course tests neither to any extent," she wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

"Whether this is the next step in the evolution of the three-day event as a sport I am not sure.

"If it is, it will then eventually, in my opinion, become a haven for riders who will never quite make it in pure dressage or pure show jumping, and who will not need to be blessed with the skills to ride across country."

Some European riders believe that the changes and the reduced challenge of the course were good for the sport.

Constantin van Rijckevorsel, a Belgian rider who spent three years travelling between New Zealand and Europe, said he supported the changes if they would keep eventing in the Olympics.


It was also good for other teams to have a chance at winning.

Todd did not agree.

"They could have made it more testing without making it more dangerous but at the end of the day, the best ones will still win."