The European Championships are upon us! An exercise in endurance for the horses and riders and an exercise in arithmetic for everyone else.
The European Championships are held every two years in those between the Olympics and the World Equestrian Games. This year they take place at Casas Novas in A Coruña, Spain, an absolutely beautiful and spacious facility on the northwest coast of the country.
We’ve just finished the first day of competition, in which we saw 89 horse-and-rider combinations from 18 nations contest a speed class of 14 obstacles set at a max height of 1.50m. We ended with Daniel Coyle of Ireland aboard Legacy ranked first in individuals and Great Britain leading the way in the teams.
Now all of this is very complicated for those of us used to watching our usual Grands Prix or even a Nations Cup event. In fact, this observer thought she might give up before she started when she found her head bent over the rules, reading and rereading them with no clearer understanding.
However, let the competition begin and what seemed obscure and fussily complicated begins to seem like a brilliant test of consistency and precision, one that forces close attention from the spectators and leaves little room for error for the riders.
The winner of the individual title, by the end, will have completed a total of 5 rounds over 4 days, along with 11 other horse-and-rider pairings. The least among the competitors will contest 2 rounds, as the qualifying rounds eliminate competitors.
The first thing you must know is EVERY ROUND COUNTS. This is where the complicated maths begin. Today, we had a speed class. The winner ends on a score of zero, and everyone else that comes behind is assessed penalties off this winning time. They take the difference between the winning time and whatever time the lower placed riders get and divide it by 2. Faults are added on top.
A clear round in this first competition is a clear round only for the winner.
These penalties count for the teams as well. The teams consist of four riders with a drop score (the score that’s dropped is still counted for the rider as an individual). Some countries, such as Cyprus, do not have teams and some riders, such as today’s winner, Daniel Coyle, are riding as individuals.
On Thursday and Friday, the team competition is contested, one round on each day respectively. The score you get here still counts towards the individual, so don’t think you’re getting a break if you aren’t on a team! In one way you can take a breath: only the faults count, so more than one person can score a 0 on these days.
On Thursday, everyone returns, in order from highest penalties to lowest. By Friday, we are only seeing the top ten teams and the top 50 individuals.
And by the end of Friday, we have our team winners—Gold, Silver, and Bronze—calculated by adding the scores from all three rounds contested up to that point.
Then you get a day off, so relax and horse and rider! I should mention that there is but one horse for each rider in this thing, so those that make it to the end are not only good jumpers, but have the strength and endurance to jump big tracks four days out of five.
On Sunday, we are back to determine the individual winner. We once again whittle things down: the first round of the individual competition is contested with the top 25 and the second with the top 12.
So let’s take the 2023 Gold Medalist Steve Guerdat of Switzerland and his horse Dynamix de Belheme as our example, because we all like a winner: He was not the fastest on the first day, that went to Jens Fredricson of Sweden. He came out of day one after his fourth-place clear round with assessed penalties of 0.43. But those were the only penalties he would see all week, following up that initial class with four crystal-clear rounds.
In fact, no one else achieved that feat: not one rail hit the ground for him all week.
Now let’s look at the team winners in 2023. That was Sweden, who ended as team winners with a total score of 9.51 over three rounds. This consisted of time penalties from the first day of 1.51 plus 8 faults from the first team round and 0 penalties from the second.
Does it make sense?
I swear it’s gonna—all you gotta do is either be there at Casas Novas watching all the action (recommended) or stay glued to the livestream all week (also recommended)!
So, let’s look at what we have going after today’s competition. We have Daniel Coyle in the first spot, but he was riding as an individual, so Ireland did not benefit (quel domage!). Instead, they’re way down in 7th, which is not the result of knocking rails, but simply consists of time penalties of 8.39.
And guess who gave a brilliant big-strided and agile round to put themselves in second with a ridiculously puny, as puny as it can get 0.01? Richard Vogel and that freak United Touch S!
In third, we have Donald Whitaker with a score of 0.67. Clear rounds did proliferate, but because time counts so dearly, several fast four-faulters find themselves ahead of the slowest clear rounds.
As far as the team standings go, we have Great Britain in the first spot on a score of 3.96, Germany barely behind at 4.19, followed by Belgium at 4.61. Needless to say, in Nations Cup parlance, these are all “zero scores,” but we ain’t living in your way-too-easy Nations Cup world over here!
Now I bet you can’t wait to hop on a plane or fire up clipmyhorse.tv to catch all the rest of the action!
And don’t you worry, I’ll be back with way more commentary and way less math next tomorrow!
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