Equestrian: Future of eventing under threat

Eventing, which has provided New Zealand with gold medals from Mark Todd and Blyth Tait, is again under pressure to be axed as an Olympic sport.

New Zealand Equestrian Federation president Cam McRae said the sport faced being dropped because of running costs and a desire by the International Olympic Committee to stage more team events.

McRae said while eventing was scheduled for the next Olympics, in Athens, the sport was preparing to fight to be retained for future Games.

He said that if eventing were dropped from the Olympics, there could be a major impact on the sport's funding, despite New Zealand riders being world team and individual champions.

The course designer for next weekend's Puhinui horse trials, Mark Phillips, has raised the threats facing eventing in a British magazine.

He believes the IOC wants all equestrian sports dropped.

"Everyone should face up to the fact that Greece, due to stage the 2004 Olympics, is not on our side," he said.

"They have no obvious site, so the equestrian events will be an expensive exercise for them."

Greece has yet to start building arenas for the equestrian sports of showjumping, dressage and eventing.

While all disciplines are under pressure, eventing would almost certainly be the first to be cut because of the costs of building cross-country courses and because powerful European nations such as Germany are weaker in that area.

McRae said New Zealand was confronting the pressure on the sport, and would probably support some changes to the way eventing was run.

He said the IOC had, to some extent, been an architect of the cost problems.

Three-day eventing used to be just one contest at Olympic level, with individual and team medals awarded.

But the IOC had objected to two gold medals being awarded from one competition, so agreed to two separate three-day events being run.