Mark Phillips: ‘Santa Anita may be the most difficult Olympic site on which to design a cross-country course ever’

Mark Phillips shares his thoughts on recent top-level cross-country courses and decisions around LA2028

After more than 40 years of designing advanced cross-country courses and over 30 years at five-star, matters pertaining to course-design have played a major part in my life. June 2025 has turned out to be a landmark month.

At Defender Bramham Horse Trials, Andrew Heffernan took over the reins from Ian Stark. He used the basis of Scotty’s track and added his personal touches, which resulted in general acclaim, leading many to think that he will play a major role in the years to come.

His learning curve was steep, including that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach on cross-country day when designing at the upper levels. I’m sure next time he will introduce one or two more speed bumps, without losing his inherent instinct for distances and flow.

At Luhmühlen, Mike Etherington-Smith’s course had more of a five-star feel this year, but was uncharacteristically twisty with incessant turns. Riders had to go faster in between fences, which may have contributed to an unprecedented number of horses failing to finish on the last day.

The continued dearth of German riders in their home five-star makes you think that if they don’t “use it”, they may well “lose it” as the competition is now being run under new management.

When I started working on the five-star 20 years ago, the leaderboard was adorned by German greats like Michael Jung, Ingrid Klimke, Andreas Dibowski and Bettina Hoy, but in recent years it has been more the domain of overseas riders.

Los Angeles dramas

Last week, the breaking news was that the expected 2028 Olympic course-designer Derek di Grazia had reached such an impasse with the organisers at Santa Anita Park in Los Angeles, they told the FEI that they could no longer work with him.

Alec Lochore visited the park earlier this year with his site manager’s hat on, to do a feasibility study for the FEI to see if all the Olympic disciplines could be staged on and around the racetrack – which is not what happened at the 1984 Games, when the cross-country was held at Fairbanks Ranch near San Diego.

Alec determined that there were two or three ways to achieve a cross-country track of between eight minutes and 8min 30sec using the racetrack, infield and part of the car park.

The FEI then played a major role in keeping eventing in the 2028 Games, resisting the lobby to drop eventing at Santa Anita.

Quite how Derek was unable to accept versions of Alec’s proposals put forward by the organisers remains something of a mystery. The organisers said that they got on well with Alec and wanted him as designer.

The FEI was then between a rock and a hard place. There was no time to go through the normal selection process due to the track needing to be set this summer, because to be ready for the 2027 test event, the turf has to be laid on the car park by September this year before racing starts again in October.

The FEI therefore went along with the request to appoint Alec Lochore as LA28 course designer and has appointed Mike Etherington-Smith as course adviser. Both are due on-site in the next couple of weeks. Many upper-level designers have been vocal in their disappointment, as Alec has no championship or five-star experience.

For the sake of the sport, I hope Alec and Mike can come up with a great course. Alec certainly has a challenge on his hands as he now has to deliver on his feasibility study, probably on the most difficult site ever for an Olympic cross-country course.

On to Blenheim

Back home, the selectors met last week to pick the initial 18 British-nominated entries for the Europeans at Agria Blenheim in September. The final list of nominations doesn’t have to be in until 18 August, but riders will know where they stand by the end of this month.

The final six have to be entered by 1 September so there may be a hard-luck story for some, first for being a reserve and second for not being able to run at Defender Burghley Horse Trials. Sadly, the same scenario will be repeated when the next Europeans go to Avenches in September 2027.

● Which younger riders would you like to see given a chance at the Europeans? Write to us at hhletters@futurenet.com, including your name, nearest town and county, for the chance for your letter to appear in a forthcoming issue of the magazine

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