Lara de Liederkerke Meier and Alpaga d’Arville. Photo by Leslie Threlkeld.
Amid the flurry of news and updates about teams for the forthcoming Tokyo Olympics, countries with individual spots for the Games have also been making important allocations and announcements about their representatives in Japan this summer.
The allocation of individual slots is a relatively complex one: for the purposes of the Games, the world is split into seven regions, and the two best-ranked athletes in each region earn their country a spot at Tokyo, assuming that country isn’t already qualified as a team. But the horse and rider combination who earn their country a spot aren’t automatically selected to take it — instead, that decision comes down to their national federation’s selectors, making the fight for individual places just as competitive as the fight for a spot on a team.
Lara de Liedekerke-Meier and Alpaga d’Arville. Photo by Leslie Threlkeld.
Belgium has one spot to use for Tokyo, which they earned by taking the best individual ranking spot for non-qualified nations in Group B, which covers South Western Europe. (Honestly, at this point, we reckon you could earn yourself a spot at the Games if you can compellingly explain how Belgium is considered part of the south west of Europe, but that’s by the by.)
Experienced Belgian combination and national champions Lara de Liedekerke-Meier and her homebred Alpaga d’Arville will head to Japan for their first-ever Olympic appearance after notching up significant championship appearances together: they’ve contested two European Championships, finishing in the top twenty in 2019, and they jumped clear around the 2018 World Equestrian Games, too. Beyond her successes with the 15-year-old Belgian Sport Horse, Lara has ridden at a further two World Equestrian Games and two Senior European Championships, following an extraordinarily successful career as a young rider that saw her contest six Europeans.
“Being selected to represent your country at Olympic Games was an unknown feeling until yesterday, but now I’ll have to get used to and make the best out of it,” said Lara in a statement on her Facebook page. “I’m beyond proud being part of Team Belgium, but also so thankful with my team and Alpaga. What a journey it has been – and far away of being finished I hope.”
For Lara, who is based at Arville with her husband, Germany’s Kai-Steffen Meier, the Olympic dream has been a long time coming.
“I missed the Olympics in London, because my horse had an injury, and then I missed Rio because of my pregnancy — so finally I have it,” she said in an interview at Strzegom. “Okay, I’m not yet there and a lot can happen, but I’ll try to stay focused and I’ll try to ride it like it’s a normal show. It’s definitely not a normal show, but I’ll try to keep my head cool! I think it’ll be an amazing adventure, and I’m really looking forward to it.”
Austria has also announced the allocation of its individual places, after receiving an additional ticket due to a complex reserve system. Though the country didn’t earn any spots through the regional ranking allocation, there are two other ways to nab individual tickets: after the initial regional rankings are dished out, a further six spots are available to the nations of the six best-ranked riders on the overall global ranking, assuming their country isn’t already qualified as a team and hasn’t already earned two individual places. Austria earned one spot through this system back in 2019, when Lea Siegl took sixth place on the list – and crucially, with Rebecca Gerold in seventh place, the country moved to the top of the reserves list for another place if any other country bowed out. Eventually, in a roundabout sort of way, this happened for them: Pakistan had earned the second individual spot for Group F, Africa and the Middle East, but after the tragic death of Pakistani eventer Usman Khan’s horse Kasheer, the allocation was rolled over to reserve country Zimbabwe. This was the final Group F reserve nation, and when Zimbabwe was unable to put forward a combination, the global reserve list was called into play – and so Austria were awarded a second slot on the Tokyo entries. Clear as mud, eh?
Katrin Khoddam-Hazrati and DSP Cosma. Photo by FEI/Massimo Argenziano.
Austria is very much a ‘developing’ eventing nation, with a small group of elite riders contesting Championships. Two of those riders – Harald Ambros and Daniel Dunst — opted to withdraw from consideration for personal reasons, leaving selection down to Austria’s leading women.
Katrin Khoddam-Hazrati and the 12-year-old Brandenburg mare DSP Cosma will take one of those two spots, following top ten placings in CCI4*-S and CCI4*-L classes at Strzegom this year. This will be a third championship for them; they made their debut at the 2017 European Championships at Strzegom, finishing just outside the top twenty individually, and contested the 2019 Europeans at Luhmühlen, though they withdrew before the final phase. Cosma, who made her five-star debut as a nine-year-old at Burghley in 2018, has gone from strength to strength over the past year with increasingly consistent, solid performances across the levels.
Lea Siegl and DSP Fighting Line. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Lea Siegl and DSP Fighting Line have been named for the second individual slot. This will be a Senior championship debut for the 22-year-old rider, who has represented Austria at three Junior and two Young Rider European Championships. Two of those – the Junior Europeans in 2016 and the Young Rider Europeans in 2017 – were in tandem with her Olympic mount, a 14-year-old German Sport Horse with whom she won the CCI4*-S at Sopot in 2019. This year, they’ve taken top five spots in CCI4*-S classes at Strzegom and Marbach, and finished 17th in the hotly-contested CCI4*-S at Luhmühlen earlier this month after delivering one of eleven clear rounds inside the time.
“Both [riders] showed what was expected of them on cross-country [at Luhmühlen],” says Austrian chef d’equipe Thomas Tesch. “As the last form check before the Olympic Games, we wanted to ride a clean round of cross-country, although timing errors could be accepted. Both riders coped well with that. The horses also got through very well and presented themselves in excellent shape despite the hot weather and the very tricky terrain. In dressage we tested a few things, but they didn’t work out as we hoped and that was evident. Now we know that we will switch back to our old system. In that sense, it was a very valuable test for Tokyo.”
Only one female event rider has ever represented Austria at the Olympics: Margit Appelt rode Ice On Fire at the 2004 Athens Games, making history for the country.
