On Monday 8 August 2016 the order of go for the countries in the Grand Prix class, which serves as first leg in the team championship competition at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, was announced. The order was slightly different from what the the FEI Rule stipulates. A "last minute rule change" lies at the cause of this new country order of go and could be an advantage to the Dutch team.
On Sunday 7 August Eurodressage already reported that there was quite some confusion amongst riders about the order of go of the nations as the FEI had set a new system in place for the Rio Olympics.
The FEI Rule reads:
The individual starters shall be drawn in the reverse order of the World Dressae Ranking List in two (2) groups, the highest placed Athletes drawn on the second day. The starting order of the teams will be drawn in groups of five (5) based on the points of the participating team Athletes on the FEI Individual World Ranking List.
According to the World Ranking Dressage List this means that the draw should be based on:
- 1. GER 9976 - drawn in group 1
- 2. USA 8558 - drawn in group 1
- 3. SWE 8241 - drawn in group 1
- 4. GBR 8096 - drawn in group 1
- 5. DEN 7466 - drawn in group 1
- 6. NED 7237 - drawn in group 2
- 7. ESP 7035 - drawn in group 2
- 8. FRA 6616 - drawn in group 2
- 9. AUS 6457 - drawn in group 2
- 10. BRA 5416 - drawn in group 2
- 11. JPN 4484 - drawn in group 3
Eleven nations are competing in Rio so there are in fact three groups instead of the two listed in the FEI rules.
The FEI has now decided to split the field up in two groups nonetheless, but with one group of 6 countries and one of 5.
- 1 AUS - drawn in group 1
- 2 ESP - drawn in group 1
- 3 JPN - drawn in group 1
- 4 FRA - drawn in group 1
- 5 BRA - drawn in group 1
- 6 GBR - drawn in group 2
- 7 DEN - drawn in group 2
- 8 USA - drawn in group 2
- 9 SWE - drawn in group 2
- 10 NED - drawn in group 2
- 11 GER - drawn in group 2
The decision has been made by the FEI to put the 6th ranking team - The Netherlands - with the strongest group, potentiall giving them an advantage to ride in the group with the stronger riders.
The chef d'equipes of Sweden and the United States have raised objection to this "last minute change of rule" as U.S. team trainer Robert Dover stated.
Eurodressage contacted the FEI about this decision. Carina Meyer, Head of dressage ad interim, issued the following statement:
"There was a question during the Dressage chef d'equipe meeting about the draw for the Grand Prix from the US but not from any other nations, and it was explained that as we have 10 directly qualified teams and one additional composite team (Denmark), we ended up with 11 teams in total. The FEI Dressage rules are silent on a scenario involving a group with only one team. This specific situation was discussed during the IOC homologation tests (for results and timing services) with the IOC and Olympic timekeeper Omega. A draw in three groups of five is not possible for 11 teams. It was agreed that a group with only one team cannot be considered a draw because the starting slot is directly allocated. The solution was to add the 11th team to one of the existing groups of five and, in the interests of the sport, it was agreed that the second (top ranked) group would be enlarged to six rather than the first (lower ranked), meaning the first group consists of five teams and the second group has six teams."
Photo © Dirk Caremans
Related Link
Eurodressage Coverage of the 2016 Olympic Games