This weekend’s Barbury Horse Trials is the last stop on the road for the US Olympic Short List members before the team is announced early next week. After a mixed day of show jumping, the US pairs have just one last cross-country ride tomorrow to impress the selectors. The extent that a final mandatory outings should factor into final team selection is a fascinating issue, punctuated by the allure of having all of the potential candidates competing together and the danger of putting too much emphasis on one weekend of competition.
A small part of me would love to see us adopt the entirely objective method of many other US Olympic team selections, such as swimming, where the team spots for each event are won and lost in exactly one race. This format puts all of the pressure on the competitors to deliver in a moment that surely must simulate the pressure of the actual Olympics and it takes politics and the potential fault of subjectivity out of the equation. This process, in an extreme format, is of course impossible for eventing where the dressage is always partially subjective and the vet evaluations are both necessary and opinion based. I also feel that there is a significant advantage for eventing teams by making selection about more than just one result at a final competition because performances dramatically vary from weekend to weekend. I would guess, while freely admitting that I haven’t done the math, that it is safe to say that a swimmer’s time for a given event varies much less week to week than a horse’s score at different competitions. Furthermore, subjectivity allows flexibility in performance. Captain Mark Phillips has rightfully spoken with the US riders and given each pair different goals for the cross-country tomorrow. Don’t worry selectors, I still love you. My point in this paragraph is to give the “winner goes” philosophy it’s best presentation, not to advocate its adoption for eventing.
A few months ago I wrote that I believe US Olympic selection will be based on two key factors–previous performance at major (especially team) competitions, and current performance level. The Saturday show jumping at Barbury featured some big moves in the rankings by US pairs. Mystery Whisper, Otis, Ringwood Magister, Mr. Medicott, Loughan Glen, and Manoir De Carneville all moved up with clear rounds, while Neville Bardos and Twizzel moved down significantly with 8 faults each. Just half of the US pairs jumped clear and only four US pairs are currently in the top 20 at Barbury. I have spoken with a few US eventing fans this afternoon who are disappointed by these results so far at Barbury. But I would argue that to apply these results to team selection or to project them to potential Olympic performance requires a great consideration of context. I would further argue that, once such context is applied, Saturday’s show jumping and Barbury in general means a great deal less to team selection than most would expect.
The US team horses arrived in England on June 18th. Due to the travels, galloping, and having a few days of light work, most of the US horses have only jumped once since Bromont and they had only two to three days of true flatwork in the two weeks before Barbury. Furthermore, the Barbury show jumping is located on grass terrain that is unmatched in undulation by any major competition in the US. The show jumping at Barbury is also held before the cross-country, which favors quieter horses and leads to a completely different experience than riding a horse on the Sunday after what will be a grueling Olympic cross-country.
All of this together results in interesting show jumping results, such as two rails for Neville Bardos despite Neville jumping what Boyd told me was a better round than at Bromont, where he produced a clear round. I would also point to these factors as a potential cause for Will Coleman and Twizzle’s two rails difference from their clear round at Rolex. My opinion is that the Barbury show jumping results are about as valuable to evaluating selection as the performance from a pair’s last big three-day and only slightly more valuable than their performance at Bromont. Similar points could be made for the dressage, where Will Faudree had the misfortune of riding Andromaque’s dressage in a massive but short lived rain storm. Will told me that he was very pleased with Missy so far this weekend but that he felt the rain helped contribute to three mistakes in their test.
My goal isn’t to make excuses for poor performances at Barbury, or to denigrate the better performances so far at Barbury. Instead, I’m making the point that even though Remington is 41 places better than Neville at Barbury, I still think Neville has a better chance at being selected than Remi. Personally, I think Otis will get the nod over both of them, but we’ll get more into that later.
The USEF spent a considerable amount of money sending all of the selectors to Barbury and I think this was a terrific decision. The selectors get to put the weekend in the best context possible. Watching how comfortable the horses and riders are under pressure is every bit as important as whether they pull a rail. Looking ahead to tomorrow, each pair is going to have a separate mission to accomplish on the cross-country and the selectors will have a chance to evaluate how each pair accomplishes their specific mission.
On Saturday afternoon the selectors all headed to the Olympic cross-country venue at Greenwich Park in London to get a feel for the terrain. A very intelligent eventing prognosticator asked me a few weeks ago what one horse would I most want to ride around the twists, turns, speed, and scope that will define Sue Benson’s Greenwich course. I responded by naming Canada’s Exponential, and if we were considering past horses I would have said Charisma. That question really resonated with me and my guess would be that the selectors left Greenwich tonight wondering about which of our US horses would best fit the Greenwich terrain. This line of thinking helps a horse like Missy and detracts from a horse like Mr. Medicott, although I still have little doubt that Mr. Medicott will make the team.
There’s no exact answer as to how much Barbury should factor into team selection. Boyd and Phillip are almost surely going to London, but I’ll wait until after tomorrow to make any predictions as to the final three team spots. I stress that the selectors shouldn’t be afraid to look at the Barbury results through the thick and sometimes clouded lenses of contextual analysis. This is going to be especially important as the riders work their way around the cross-country tomorrow. And after all of that we haven’t even talked about the looming Monday vet evaluations. Go eventing.
