Your Eventing Olympic Cheat Sheet

The big question going into the picturesque Versailles arena and surrounding French gardens ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games is, can anyone stop the Brits?

A total of 81 horse and rider pairs (including traveling reserves) from around the globe have descended upon France, with the hopes of making the podium and going home with an Olympic medal in three-day eventing in the coming days. That includes 16 nations for team competition and an additional 11 riders vying for individual medals.

There are seven top nations competing in Paris who made the rounds at the 2022 FEI World Championships in Pratoni, Italy. They include: Great Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, New Zealand (bronze team winner), the United States (silver medal winner) and Germany (gold medal winner).

But who will take home gold?

The Brits dominate the FEI World Eventing Rankings going into the Games—Ros Canter holds the No. 1 spot. In third is Tokyo Olympic silver medalist Tom McEwen. To round out the British powerhouse team, the 2022 World Champion Yasmin Ingham ranks fifth and Laura Collett is 25th.

And they are, after all, the defending champions from 2021 in Tokyo. Can they do it again?

Canter, McEwen and Collett make up the British Olympic eventing team with Ingham in reserve. But it’s their mounts that really make it all sing with the experience and hard-earned results of Lordships Graffalo (with 2023 Badminton and FEI European Championship wins under his belt), London 52 (part of the gold medal winning Tokyo 2021 team) and JL Dublin (meticulously produced by the one and only Nicola Wilson).

It’s hard to envision someone other than Canter or Collett at the top of the leaderboard come show jumping day (Monday, July 29) given their resume and results.

But if anyone could shake things up, it’s Germany. Especially when you’ve got two-time Olympic gold medalist and Rolex Grand Slam winner Michael Jung and his seasoned partner, Chipmunk FRH on the roster.

Only one American rider cracks the top 10 in the FEI World Rankings ahead of the Games. And you guessed it, it’s Boyd Martin.

His story is one for the history books, as he pilots the late Annie Goodwin’s Fedarman B around his first-ever Games in her memory. Goodwin, an Advanced-level American event rider, died in 2021 following a cross-country schooling accident. Martin took on the ride shortly after.

But at No. 11 in the rankings is American team rider Caroline Pamucku who is about to make her first go around at an Olympic Games with failed sales horse/young superstar in the making, HSH Blake. She may be a rookie, but she took home individual gold at the 2023 Pan American Games and helped earn Team USA a silver medal finish.

And you can’t count out the scrappy Kiwis at No. 8 and No. 9 in world rankings respectively—Jonelle and Tim Price, no newcomers to the Olympics and podium finishes, will compete for New Zealand.

See a full list of all Olympic competitors here.

Among the dozens of horse and rider pairs bound for centerline on Friday is Ireland’s Susie Berry, who earned a spot on the team for her first Olympic Games with Wellfield’s Lincoln. At age 28, the rider had five Advanced-level horses in contention for this year’s Games and has certainly earned her spot alongside Sarah Ennis and Austin O’Connor.

But the beauty of eventing is it’s truly anyone’s game. These horses and riders are arriving in France in top form and will spend three full days in French countryside battling it out to be crowned Olympic champion.

This is it, my friends. You’ll want to be tuned in.

The Olympic format:

The Paris Games is a 5-star short test, which runs over three days. Individual and team competitions run during the same schedule. Three members make up a team with no drop score.

The top 25 individual riders qualify to compete in a second show jumping round (which takes place after the team show jumping round), which will determine individual scoring. That means top 25 riders who are also on a team will jump twice on the last day of competition.