horse rather than a bold, brute athlete like you have in the majority of Thoroughbreds,” says Boyd. “Sometimes I question whether course designers have taken this idea much too far and started designing their courses to be too tricky, hiding corners behind trees and things, which really makes it more difficult. I’ve changed my training a little bit, where I’m often training cross-country questions in the jump ring. I school many of the accuracy questions like corners and narrows in the ring. These are relatively new in eventing, not only in three-days but in horse trials as well.” Trends in course design tend to be
cyclical, as designers try to find new ways to challenge horses and riders. As riders school whatever is in vogue and master the latest trend, they “catch up” to what the designers are doing. The designers then must come up with a new way to challenge competitors while keeping courses safe and rideable. Denis thinks that the pendulum is swinging away from trappy and technical to bigger, galloping courses. “In recent years it’s been the use of jumps: angled and skinny fences, a lot of times dealing with water, or mounds, where you come off the mound to the skinny,” says Denis. “One issue today, as a designer, is that you have to make sure you’re not making a show jumping course out of cross-country. What you do when you watch an upper-level rider go cross-country, is every time they pull on the reins they take half a second off their time.” “At Rolex this year people were shocked
by how many riders made the time. All you had to do was look and see that a lot of the combinations were forward-riding. Most of the course, except for the Sunken Road, encouraged riders to go forward,” he adds. It’s important to remember that course
designers and builders are horsemen too; while they are trying to challenge horses and riders, they also want them to learn from their courses and have a good time. Samantha St. Jacques says she likes that
courses today are built with the horse in mind. “Questions such as ‘how will a horse read this fence’ and ‘what is a horse’s first response going to be when presented with this’ should always be considered,” she says. “The biggest thing that I hope is to see courses that have the majority of horses galloping through the finish line saying ‘Wow, wasn’t that fun!’”
18 September/October 2013
Evolution of the Three-Day Event
or cross-country. Show jumping took place on the final day. Today, the second phase at the upper levels has changed to a “short
T
format” whereby Phases A to C (roads and tracks and steeplechase) have been eliminated and replaced by the cross-country course alone—Phase D. The “long format” has become more of a training exercise/competition at the one-star level and below. For scheduling purposes the dressage and show jumping at CIC competitions now takes place on Saturday, with cross-country on Sunday. The traditional difference between the CCI and the CIC was that
the four phases of cross-country (A, B, C, and D) were held in a CCI competition, while CIC competition only ran the D, or cross-country phase. With the advent of the new short format (no Roads and Tracks or Steeplechase), the FEI agreed to increase the distance and difficulty of the CCI cross-country courses to make them harder than those run in CIC competitions. Thus, CIC competitions have fewer obstacles on a course that is almost half the distance of a CCI. Thanks to the change in format, top-level horses no longer need as much time off after major competitions. Many professional event riders in the east spend winters in places like Ocala, Florida and Aiken, South Carolina so that they can compete year-round and keep their businesses running during the winter. There has been discussion at the FEI about making CIC cross-
country slower and easier, but so far no agreement has been reached. Some riders believe that slower speeds give riders time to set up for the fences and get their horses in a rhythm, while others believe that when horses go the same speed at a CIC and a CCI, the move up is easier. Today, all championships held under the auspices of the FEI are held
in the short format, although in the United States, at the one-star level, the long format continues to be used to test the proper development and training of the event horse. For educational purposes, long format events at the lower levels (Training and below) have also become popular, although they are still fairly uncommon. v
he original three-day event consisted of dressage on the first day, with roads and track and steeplechase (phases A-C) before phase D,
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