An Eye to the Future: Previewing Giuseppe Della Chiesa’s CHIO Aachen Cross Country

We came to CHIO Aachen this year with high anticipation. After all, this site will, for the first time in 20 years, see the return of *most* disciplines in a reunited World Championships next year that will harken back to the World Equestrian Games of 2006. With that in mind, it falls to newly-installed course designer Giuseppe Della Chiesa (ITA) — also the designer for our most recent World Championships held at Pratoni del Vivaro in 2022 — to put together a track that allows him to fact-find for 2026.

As a result, we’ve got quite a different look and feel to the track, which was designed by Germany’s Rüdiger Schwarz previously before he retired. Giuseppe and his team have taken on the workload to open up new areas of the property — which isn’t boundless to begin with. It’s a completely different piece of land in comparison to the expansive terrain in Pratoni, but Giuseppe sees a future for this course, and that’s what he’s designing for.

“This was the main thing — what can we do to produce the course for next year?” Giuseppe told me. “So we came with the idea to produce something for next year, but especially to produce a venue for the next 20 years. This was the thinking. I spoke with the organizer. [I asked] ‘What is your intention for the next 20 years — to go on with eventing or not?’ Yes? Okay, then we try to produce a venue that can give for the future a lot more possibilities of changing course, of getting, you know, an instance.”

British rider Tom McEwen describes Aachen as “an unofficial five-star Short.”

“[Giuseppe] has designed an awesome course,” he said. “It lets you flow into it, and then all of a sudden, the intensity really hits you. We all know that the time is the biggest problem and I’ve seen many the top rider on the top horse just have the odd thing because of speed, which makes it an exciting show.”

And so we look ahead to this new design, which has received largely favorable reviews from the riders coming in from their walks. Most prominent in terms of flow, the first six or so fences are set on a yawning loop that will allow the riders to get their horses up into the bridle before the intensive, twisting parts of the track come in to play.

[The first combination comes at 4AB, and while it shouldn’t cause much trouble, riders will want to be aware of their right aids to keep their horses on the line and ensure they’ve got the tools they need as the course progresses.]

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After a handful of single fences on a gentle uphill slope to get the horses up in the air, riders will tackle the first combination at 4AB, a set of brush arrowheads positioned on a related, left-handed distance down a double mound. This question shouldn’t really cause much trouble, but will be good information for riders to use as they move on — Giuseppe says he’s set this on a somewhat progressive tone, with similar-feeling questions at increasing technicality coming later on.

[The BC and D elements of the straight route here involve a rollercoaster of a terrain change in between.]

After getting up over a big table at 7A, the riders will tackle two arrowheads, set again on a left-handed related distance but with the additional challenge of a steep, rollercoaster-esque dip in the terrain. There is an option here that will send riders off to the right should they not wish to answer this question right away or have trouble at the BC element.

From there, the hits just keep coming. The time is wheeled tightly at 6:35 — shorter than the course’s recent counterparts — and riders will need to ensure they keep the RPMs up while maintaining the necessary control to execute the turning and technicality exercises well. The next challenge comes at 9ABC, where the horses will get their feet wet for the first time.

This is another newer, or at least significantly modified, addition to the track; you’ll recall there was once a bridge over this Rolex water that frankly was barely used as more than decoration, but that has been removed this year. For Giuseppe, the removal of the bridge (which was done because it needed redoing and the organizers opted to just remove it) actually gives him more options.

“So we don’t have a bridge anymore, and now the water is much more accessible,” he explained. “And now we actually can go twice in water, no problem. I made this new exit [and] entrance with the brush down the hill, and now for the future we have many different options.”

The brush down the hill comes after a mound to 9A, a brush vertical that feeds the horses down into the water and over a right-handed corner and then a duck in the water off a left-handed turn at C.

[This is another series of fences that look somewhat deceiving in photos, as it’s hard to capture the steep dip in terrain that occurs between 10 and 11.]

We’ll then have another rollercoaster, line-testing question at 10 and 11 that will test footwork and rideability over two inviting logs. They’ll then come back into the Rolex water at 12, jumping a hanging log with a nice, guiding ground line to feed them in, followed by another duck in the water, and a right-handed corner off a short related distance.

Need to take a breath? Think again! You’ve now only got a few seconds to prepare for the coffin — a very “classical coffin”, as Giuseppe puts it, at 13ABC that features a steep downhill after a MIM-pinned airy rail. A very narrow arrowhead awaits at C, and Bettina Hoy noted on our walk that the steepness of the hill and the ditch could throw an odd wiggle into some horses, which will of course make the C that much more difficult to attain.

The next combination — and one that could exert its fair share of influence — comes at 16 ABC. The A element of this, a brush vertical, comes at the top of another mound, this time off a relatively short left-handed turn. Riders will need to find their line immediately after the A, as they’ll get pulled downhill to a pair of offset hedges set at a standard two-stride distance.

The view through 16A to the offset brushes below.

“That’s a real five-star angle for me,” Irish rider Padraig McCarthy told me. “There’s no deviation of your line, and if your horse isn’t reading it, you’re going to have a mistake. I think we might see people going long, especially if it’s influential at the start of the competition.”

You’re almost home at 18, which is perennially an influential question as it’s the final one before riders enter into the stadium to finish. By now, most are chasing the time, and can get caught out with a silly mistake here. This year, the combination has been backed off of its previous location closer to the road, and it’s a pair of left-handed open corners set on three strides. It’s a fairly straightforward question, but again, the complexity factor should be added in when accounting for the desire to catch the time.

Fence 21 features a MIM-pinned gate into the water.

After this, riders will gallop into the festive, raucous main stadium, where a handful of fences and an eager crowd of spectators await them. Giuseppe’s done a steeplechase brush, a MIM oxer, a MIM gate into the water and a step out, as well as the traditional keyhole to finish on. While these are generally more of speed bump questions, we’ve seen more than a few riders get caught up in a flat jump trying to get home, so he’s done his due diligence here to try to slow them down as much as possible.

“This course here, the only place where you can really make time is the beginning,” Giuseppe said. “The risk is that, if you go out really as a bullet… you risk to come to [4AB] with a horse that is all very free, and then here you could run into trouble. If we have nobody in the time, I’m not worried. But then the time becomes the deciding factor. And so… you still put some pressure on them, and some little mistakes come and that becomes more exciting.”

Giuseppe’s design philosophy comes down to challenging the riders. To him, the general 4* horse can jump any question. It’s a matter of placing questions in a way that makes the riders think and make good decisions. This is his way of laying out a challenge that tests the best without crushing the rest; a philosophy he’ll be tested even further on next year at World Championships.

“You can design for the horses or for the riders,” he elaborated. “I will say, I like to design for the riders. If a rider rides well, he has a horse that is well prepared. [The horse] doesn’t need to be a star; the normal horse must be able to do things. Then the good ones are the ones that can do it more economically and be a bit quicker. Sometimes it’s more… you’re testing their brain. The adaptability of the horse that is under control. Sometimes you have horses that are very powerful, but no real control.”

“It definitely needs good riding,” echoed Belgian Olympic legend Karin Donckers, who’s brought the 20-years-young Fletcha van’t Verahof here and who also competed at WEG in 2006. “You have to be on the right line, the right angle, everything has to be right. You’re not going to finish the course by luck. And that’s what I think the future for the sport is, and what we like — it’s the schooling of the horses, the good education, the trust, the good building up to this highest level. And I think if you did all that well, then you have the benefit [here she used a Dutch phrase that she didn’t know the English version of, so consider this your eventing ad libs for the day] — you have the big result in competitions like this.”

And so we anxiously await the official christening of this new track, which for all intents and purposes feels very much like a sneak preview of World Championships next year. Giuseppe’s already built some other features that aren’t being used this weekend but will factor in next year, and of course there will be more ground to use to lengthen the track to 9 or 10 minutes for Worlds.

We’ll get a first taste of the track starting at 9:55 am local time / 3:55 am EST on Saturday, so be sure to tune in live on ClipMyHorse.TV and/or via Cheg Darlington’s live blog here on EN.

Want a better look at the course? See the post below to see our walkthrough:

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Safe rides to all, and Go Eventing!

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