The past couple weeks have sure been busy on the eventing scene, with major three-day events taking place at Pau in France, Galway in California, as well as an Indoor Eventing competition taking place at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto. The excitement isn’t letting up as the final four-star competition of 2010 is happening this weekend at Adelaide in Australia. Adelaide will be the smallest, in terms of starters, of all the four stars that took place this year. As of now, the field is comprised of less than thirty horses. Sufficed to say, the field may be small but the cross-country course certainly won’t be.
Let’s take a look back at this year’s four-stars as well as the nationality of each of the winning riders. Interestingly enough, none of the winners of these four-star events in America, England, Germany, and France won in their home country.
Back in April at the Rolex CCI****, Cool Mountain and his British jockey, William Fox-Pitt led the competition from start to finish, adding no additional penalties to their dressage score of 42.8. Cool Mountain was relatively young and inexperienced to the level, so it took many by surprise when he seemingly came out from nowhere to win the title.
A week later, the Badminton four-star took place across the pond in England, where Aussie Paul Tapner and Inonothing ended on top of a field of 128 horses. They must have known something as they put in a brilliant round cross-country landing only a second outside the time and the next day jumped an equally brilliant double clear to clinch the title.
Later on in June, top horses and riders assembled again, this time in Germany, at the Luhmuhlen Three-Day Event. British rider Sharon Hunt won the event aboard her longtime partner Tanker’s Town. It was a close call, as German rider Ingrid Klimke and FRH Butts Abraxas finished just .2 penalties behind her.
The Burghley Horse Trials took place the first weekend in September. Although the field was smaller than usual as most countries were saving their top horses for the upcoming World Championships, the challenge set out by course designer Mark Phillips was of full Burghley dimensions. Caroline Powell became the fourth New Zealander ever to win Burghley, riding the 17-year-old gelding Lenamore.
I don’t really think a recap of the 2010 WEG is necessary, I’m pretty the results will be sufficiently engrained in the minds of every single eventing fan for many years to come. In case you aren’t one of those fans though, you should know that German rider Michael Jung and La Biosthetique-Sam won the Individual competition, ahead of William Fox-Pitt and Cool Mountain, and New Zealander Andrew Nicholson and Nereo. In regards to team placings, Great Britain stood at the top of the podium Sunday afternoon, followed by Canada and New Zealand. Team USA stood at the in-gate, as they finished out of the medals in fourth.
Just last weekend, France hosted its annual four-star event at Pau. Although it seemed going into Show Jumping that overnight leader William Fox-Pitt would continue his seemingly untouchable year and win Pau, three rails fell for him and German Andreas Dibowski and FRH Fantasia emerged victorious.
So that sums up the 2010 year of four-star events to date. So far, Great Britain has won two of this year’s four-stars (three including Team victory at the WEG). Germany won two four-stars when you include Michael Jung’s individual win in Kentucky. So far, Australia and New Zealand each hold a single four-star victory. The addition of the WEG to the normal string of six annual four-stars complicates the final count slightly, but it appears that Great Britain has emerged on top this year; with riders in the top spots at Rolex, Luhmuhlen and ultimately the World Equestrian Games. With the Adelaide entries, it seems like Australia has a good chance to tie Great Britain and Germany for individual four-star titles in 2010.
Link: Aelaide entries
Adelaide’s taking place this week. Any bets as to who the winner or winning nation will be?
