Once again, we are pleased to welcome back guest writer Austin Ligon, proud father of Nina Ligon, and guru on the Olympic eventing qualification process. Austin first wrote for EN reporting from the Montelibretti CCI***, and kept us up to date on the Olympic qualifying race leading up to Nina’s achievement of Olympic qualification. From this he has a unique perspective on what the Australians are facing, concerning the necessary points earned to make the composite team a possibility. Thank to Austin for writing, and thank you for reading.
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From Austin:
I don’t mean to jump into the middle of the Australian Team selection controversy. And Hamish Cargill is especially right about one point, which is the Aussies easily have 3 teams worth of Olympic-worthy riders…so in some sense, the rest of us should just be glad they can only send 5! (I should be careful here, lest New South Wales or Victoria start noticing that Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands get their own teams, and start conspiring with clever Aussie lawyers to semi-secede). And the team the Aussie selectors have chosen is a formidable one…..and probably even their best chance at winning medals.
–T
This is not a normal selection controversy, by any means. It is a twisted, global tale spread over two years of Olympic qualification, but it all starts with one simple fact:
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AUSTRALIA FAILED TWICE TO QUALIFY AS A TEAM…AND HAD TO QUALIFY AS INDIVIDUALS.
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Well, you say, they still get to ride as a composite team, so it doesn’t really matter. FEI rules say the spots belong to the NOC regardless of who wins them, so tough patooties.
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Tell that to the 6 of 9 excluded folks who busted their tail-ends riding in 15-20 events, and accumulating at minimum the equivalent of 5 CIC*** wins over a year (205 Olympic qualifying points) during the qualifying year so that Australia could be assured of the 5 Individual spots. As John has tried to explain before, 7 of the 20 individual slots are set aside as “regional reserves,” 1 per continent to go to the best rider in that area hailing from a country without a team. The other 13 I call the “true open” slots….anyone from a country that has no team can get them, and each country can accumulate up to 5….3 or more, and you get to ride as a “composite team.” This time round, it took 203 points to win one of the 13 “true open” positions. Adding in the 5 wait list spots that were just filled when Argentina failed to qualify the minimum 2 horses (they got 3 riders qualified, but only 2 horses), there were 11 Aussies who could claim to have contributed to the country having 5 slots. But only 3 of those get to ride (#1 Clayton, #4 Shane Rose, #9 Chris Burton).
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Had either Lucinda or Andrew at least gotten enough qualifying points that they would have contributed to earning the spots, the others might be bit less ticked off. But unfortunately, neither rode enough, or won enough, in the qualifying year to do so….indeed, with only 172 and 169 points respectively, neither of them would even stand a chance of winning a wait list spot on their own.
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When 3 Aussies fell off their horses at the WEG in 2010, and failed to pick up a Team slot, it sent those of us trying to win a slot from Asia (basically, the Japanese, Chinese, and Thais) into a minor tizzy. This meant the Aussies would surely pick up their Team slot by winning the “Asia-Pacific Championship” held as a sub-event at Blenheim, and the chance for a full Asian team to qualify was likely out the window. This meant no other Asian nation need even bother to send a team, even if we could muster up the minimum three 3-star riders.
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But the Japanese persisted, New Zealand sent a team just to help the Aussies get the minimum three teams to have the championship count…and the Aussies, with a junior team that included only one of their top 15 riders (Lucinda F.) proceeded to fail to finish 3 horses yet again! So when Atsushi Negishi nursed home Mavrick du Granit to a 111.8 total score, the Japanese had 3 finishers and were in as a qualified Team …. and won a big congratulations for sticking with it!
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And, for the rest of us in European and Asian countries without teams, the nightmare scenario came true: the Aussies were in the individual pool, therefore almost certain to pick up the first 4 of the 13 precious “true open” individual slots (excluding the 7 reserved regional slots)….and leaving that many less for all the rest of us. To add insult to injury for Alex Hua Tian of China and my favorite rider, the Asian Reserve Slot, due to a rules interpretation that would give a Talmudic scholar or a Quantum Physicist migraines, Clayton Fredericks would take the “reserved slot” for Asia, set aside to assure that each continent would have at least one non-team rider (Talmudic/Quantum query: when is a team a team, and when is a team not a team; and when is a team both a team and not a team at the same time….see Schrodinger’s Cat example…).
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By this time, Dear Reader, you are probably intuiting of why a guy from West Texas who lives in Virginia is commenting on how an Australian Team selection controversy might somehow relate to the fate of Polish, Chinese, Dutch, Austrian, Italian, Irish, Belorussian, Russian, Danish, and, of course, Thai Olympic aspirants.
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But there you have it. The Aussies botched getting a team twice, but knew they would pick up 5 individual slots with almost 100% certainty. Not so certain, you say ? Au contraire. Besides the acknowledged fact that they have way too many of the world’s top riders to start with, they also have a domestic circuit with so many competitions that nobody rides in but Aussies that it is essentially a mathematical certainty that they would get 5 of the top 20.
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You can also tell that the Aussies have been a burr in my blanket for two years, upsetting fantasy plans for how Olympic qualification might be a bit easier for this writer’s favorite rider. But, as the philosopher said, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, so having to go all out for a full year under continuously increasing pressure was certainly a great thing for my favorite 20 year old Eventer…as two months of riding competitively in England this spring has definitely reminded us ALL how many great riders there are out there, and how the pressure ramps up when a hundred or so of them show up every weekend….I should be thanking the Aussies for their help!
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Not to mention, of course, that Andrew Hoy and Heath Ryan have been of great help to the Thai Equestrian Team over the last several cycles of Regional competitions, and helped them win some Gold Medals in the Southeast Asian Games in ’07 and ’11. So no Aussie-bashing from me.
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But Australia sees itself as a working man’s/woman’s country. And the essence of this selection controversy is that the folks who did the work to win the Individual slots think it unseemly that others who didn’t might get to use them. I think we all learned this story in Kindergarten when we studied the management philosophies of the Little Red Hen, Inc. (most controversies relate to things we should have learned in Kindergarten). But, as Hamish said, it is the job of the selector’s to pick the best team for the nation. And you know that’s what they are trying to do….. and it is hard to argue with the Team they have picked. But having done so, Red Hen herself would have guaranteed this controversy coming for the last 6 months.
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Anyway, if you are still with me after this circuitous journey, hopefully you understand that the spurned Aussies who did the work to earn the slots are perhaps a bit legitimately ticked off, and not a bunch of gratuitous whiners. Just be glad YOU don’t have to serve on that Committee. And when you hear that New South Wales has become an independent Commonwealth under Australian quasi-indirect governance, you’ll know it all started here.
