Mark Phillips on the latest course design news from LA 2028, developments on the national scene and a fitness race against time for one top rider who is out of action after a fall from his bike
Olympic course-designer Alec Lochore is now back in the UK after his five-day visit to the 2028 Games venue at Santa Anita, California, where he was joined by course advisor Mike Etherington-Smith for a couple of days. Both are now feeling good about the possibility of producing a circa 5,000-metre track for the Los Angeles Games.
As ever, there are many i’s to be dotted and t’s to be crossed, but the people at Santa Anita were very positive in their attitude and have agreed in principle to the groundworks to be done on the hill to the side of the racetrack, which will provide some terrain, and that the course will be crossing the car park.
All being well, Alec will return to Los Angeles to move the programme forward in October.
Fundraising and facebook
These are different times at British Eventing (BE) and I’m definitely feeling my age. Recently BE advertised for people to serve on the fixtures committee, whereas previously people with the perceived expertise have been invited.
Seventeen people responded, two of whom were organisers, so were immediately discounted because of potential conflict of interest. This number is now down to six, who are being interviewed this week. The first job of the selected appointees will be to try to determine the 2026 domestic calendar, which will hopefully be published in November.
The 2026 international fixtures will be published shortly, when the respective organisers have signed and returned their heads of terms.
I was interested to read about the fundraising effort at Defender Burghley Horse Trials for the BE Training Foundation, with a Q&A session with Pippa Funnell and Lucinda Green and a course walk with Alec.
The foundation has been jump-started with a £80,000 donation by David Howden and is currently being used primarily for grassroots coaching around the country.
The Burghley fundraiser is an effort to extend the scope of the foundation into continuing education for officials, which has been non-existent for many years now because of BE’s financial woes, and then to extend it into “modernised learning pathways” and a “digital learning platform”, which I confess means little to an old-fashioned official like me!
Further plans for an outreach campaign to maybe attract new officials from different areas and an effort to align British training and standards with FEI best practice are to be commended. However, I’m unclear about who is going to create and implement all this. Let’s hope the fundraising goes well at Burghley!
The periodic emails from the BE marketing department are nothing if not enthusiastic. They don’t do much for me, old age striking again, but seem to be well received in the big world, where BE Facebook and Instagram views now number over three million a month and TikTok followers are growing, too.
In recent years, BE membership has fallen by 10% every year, but this year membership is down 6%. Maybe the decline has bottomed out or maybe BE has turned a corner – time will tell.
Let’s stick to horses…
This seems to be the summer for biking accidents! Harry Meade had a fall, punctured a lung, broke three ribs and damaged his shoulder. Helen West hit an irrigation pipe, has a black eye and multiple scrapes.
Harry’s accident three weeks ago has obviously hindered his preparations for Burghley and the Agria Blenheim Europeans. However, Laura Tomlinson and Lewis Robertson-Carrier are helping keep his horses going on the flat and Grant Wilson with the jumping, and he has excellent support for his rehab from the World Class team.
Fingers crossed he can be fit in time for the big autumn events.
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