A Brand New Bank and Angles for Days: Take a Look at Luhmühlen’s Key Combinations

Fence 1.

Tomorrow’s cross-country course at the Longines Luhmühlen CCI5* has got everyone talking, with several riders reckoning the 11:08 optimum time will be near-on impossible to catch, even with just 28 numbered fences — and that comes down to its intensity and technicality, “like an eleven-minute CCI4*-S,” as Ros Canter aptly put it earlier today. It’s another sterling effort from long-time course designer Mike Etherington-Smith, who’s added some new features this year, including an Irish bank that’s got a few of our German friends feeling a little bit weak at the knees.

First of all, let’s get some real pet-peeve housekeeping out of the way.

There are a few common blanket statements that I hear time and time again in the eventing world, and one of those that makes me roll my eyes so far back into my head that I can see into Australia is this: Luhmühlen is a soft five-star.

Is there any such thing, really? No, you won’t come to Luhmühlen and find yourself gulping at the take-off side of the fences, unable to comprehend how anyone can find enough velocity or, indeed, cajones to make it to the other side. It’s not a dimensionally colossal five-star. It’s not Burghley.

But what it does do very well is make riders think. It’s a very European, very academic track, with plenty of washing machine turnbacks and exacting angles that’ll lead to harmless — but expensive — runouts if riders or horses take their eye off the ball for even a moment.

This year’s course switches directions from the last couple of years’ tracks – the last time we saw it run in this direction was 2022. In real-world, practical terms, that means that the always very influential Longines water complex in the woods comes up so early that it’s actually the first combination our competitors will meet, and they’ll approach it off a steep downhill run – so from very early on, we’ll expect to see a barometer of each partnership’s ‘readiness’ for this level.

The first three fences are familiar, friendly ones: there’s the stalwart Luhmühlen flowerbox to get our competitors underway, followed by a table at 2 and a brush spread fence heading into the woods at 3. As at any event, the purpose of these early fences is straightforward: simply, they’re there to allow horses to settle into a cruising rhythm and have confidence-building experiences leaving the ground and meeting the crowds.

After the third fence, they’ll head into the venue’s peaceful woodland for a surprisingly long gallop stretch – and that, in and of itself, presents one of this competition’s first challenges. The wooded areas on course are hemmed by very tall, slim tree trunks, which create an interesting optical illusion: because they’re so numerous and so slim, they zoom by in the riders’ peripheral vision, creating an idea of high speed that isn’t necessarily backed up by their meters per minute. If a rider doesn’t keep a close eye on their minute markers here, they could be lured into thinking they’re moving much faster than they really are, all the while losing valuable seconds that they’ll struggle to catch up later. But if they’re militant in monitoring their speed, they can make up ground that they’ll be grateful for later on.

Here’s a look at some of the fences that could play a major role in how tomorrow’s competition plays out — and some that just look very impressive (we’re looking at you, ditch-and-brush).