H&H’s eventing editor and Aachen World Championships reporter Pippa Roome assesses the line-up for British selection
If you could be a fly on any wall for a day, where would you go? I’d head to a meeting of the British selectors as they pick the World Championships eventing team for Aachen. As expected with such a wealth of strong combinations, Britain has nominated the maximum 15 entries, with the squad of five to come.
Three pairs – Ros Canter with Lordships Graffalo, Laura Collett on London 52, Tom McEwen riding JL Dublin – are surely guaranteed a spot in the British eventing team. The Paris gold medallists all have a back catalogue of excellent form, combining individual medal potential with consistency.
Tom has Brookfield Quality also listed and despite his good results, I think his pattern of missing the time on his long-format runs pushes him down the list.
Gemma Stevens and Flash Cooley have a strong claim, with a bank of sparkling four-star form over the past two years, bar a rider fall at NAF Hartpury last season. The chink in their armour is lack of five-star form and that their long format win this year came at an event where the cross-country time was easy to achieve.
What does the British team selection policy say?
The selection policy places qualification for the LA28 Olympics – so a top-seven team finish, excluding the USA, who qualify as hosts – as Britain’s primary aim at this championship, followed (in no particular order) by winning medals and giving championship experience.
This might play into the hands of Harry Meade and Cavalier Crystal, who have been top-four finishers four times at five-star and should offer reliability – a priority for that team finish – over a seriously low score (more important for winning medals). Harry’s fall at Mars Badminton, when the mare stood on herself, was unfortunate and the selectors may be willing to forgive it.
Harry’s other top mare, Annaghmore Valoner, who finished third at Badminton, was a surprise absence from the list – she has sadly had a setback which means she will miss the autumn season.
David Doel and Galileo Nieuwmoed offered a similar profile of reliable five-star form, without stellar dressage, until their two five-star falls last year. Despite Pau and Defender Kentucky success since, those two errors may be harder to overlook than Cavalier Crystal’s mistake.
Bubby Upton (Its Cooley Time) and Caroline Harris (D. Day) fell on their championship debuts at the Europeans last year. Both have come back with wins, at Defender Bramham and Longines Luhmühlen, and they are well-supported professionals with other horses coming through, so they fit the selection criteria of giving championship experience.
Although Bubby has had two other falls besides the Blenheim one, I think she may be given the individual berth, because her dressage scores make her a potential medallist.
The four 10-year-old horses named are all very promising potential future team players, but may benefit from another year or two. They are United 36 (Tom Jackson), Corimiro (Sarah Bullimore), Gypsie Du Loir (Yasmin Ingham) and Cooley Park Muze (Gemma Stevens).
Finally Katie Magee (Treworra, fifth at Badminton) and Selina Milnes (Cooley Snapchat, second at Bramham) both have other decent results too, but also blips. Neither rider is on the World Class Programme (nor is David Doel currently, although he has been in the past) and while that’s not essential, it’s a measure of who’s on the high performance radar.
Kudos to them for making the 15, but I don’t expect to see them in the final five selected for the British eventing team.
Plenty of choices on worlds’ cross-country track
The top line takeaways from my interview with course-designer Giuseppe della Chiesa about the World Championship cross-country track are as follows.
There are 42 jumping efforts via the straight routes, but 74 fences on the track, indicating the number of alternatives available. In places, Giuseppe has given riders choices that are only two to seven seconds more time-consuming, so they are not true direct and long routes, but genuine alternatives.
The optimum time of around 10 minutes should be tight.
“If you go all the direct routes, you will have jumped a ‘four-star plus’, but you can also find a ‘three-and-a-half-star’ to get around,” says Giuseppe.
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