Show jumping and para dressage both enjoyed great success at the recent Olympics in Versailles, France, while eventing and dressage went down to defeat.

Robert Ridland, current jumping chef d'equipe, was previously a team member, and is shown here competing on No Penalty at the Valley Forge Grand Prix (Photo by Robert Frankenfeld)Para Dressage riders won five gold medals, a silver and a bronze, for seven medals, including the Team gold, from the nine divisions in which they competed, while the showing team won a silver medal in a very competitive competition.

The eventing team finished seventh of 16 teams and the dressage team was eliminated  when a spot of blood was found on one of the horses, but even had that horse not been eliminated the team would have finished far down the list of the 11 competing nations.

Para dressage and jumping both set records, with the para dressage team scoring the highest team score ever, while jumping's silver medal meant the jumping team has won gold or silver in five of the last six Olympics, a feat never before accomplished in jumping.

The perhaps surprising fact, not just in this Olympics but over the years, is the huge influence the chefs d'equipe have on the success of their teams.

In para dressage, Michel Assouline, who had previously led the team from Great Britain to every team gold medal since the discipline was added to the Olympics, took a moderately successful U.S. team and turned it into a powerhouse.

In show jumping, Robert Ridland took a discipline that had won medals fairly steadily over the years and made it into a more consistent winner with greater depth.

Both Assouline and Ridland had started with a plan and carried it out.

 

THE HISTORY of the success or lack thereof of jumping, eventing and dressage shows the huge influence of the chef d'equipe.

Jumping has benefited from a steady succession of strong chefs d'equipe who have inspired riders not only to want to ride on a team but to win.

Bert de Nemethy took a scattered discipline, molded it into the form it is today and started it's ability to medal with a silver medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

Frank Chapot and George Morris followed de Nemethy, and both led both winning and losing teams, but it was Ridland's plan to put one or two young riders along with two or three veterans on every Nations Cup team that gave the discipline its depth and success today.

In eventing, Jack Le Goff ruled with an iron fist from 1970 to 1984, during which time the U.S. won 18 medals in international competition, a period known as the golden age of eventing in the U.S.

Michael Page served as chef d'equipe for the 1988 and 1992 Olympics, with no Olympic medals, followed by Captain Mark Phillips, who served from 1994 to 2014 with great success for his first 10 years but little to none during his second 10 years.

He was followed by David O'Connor, Erik Duvander and now Bobby Costello, all with little or no success.

Costello is just beginning his tenure, and it remains to be seen if he can organize a fractured discipline with little or no depth and apparently a majority of riders with no aspirations to ride on a team into the powerhouse with the success it once enjoyed.

Dressage is hard to evaluate because it has never had a chef d'equipe that lasted more than two or three of Olympic cycles, but despite that dressage has enjoyed more success than loss over the last 30 years.

Jessica Ransehouse began dressage's modern success with teams winning Olympic bronze in both 1992, 1996 and 2000 Olympics.

Klaus Balkenhal led the team to a bronze medal in the 2004 Olympics.

Anne Gribbon was chef' d'equipe for the 2008 and 2012 Olympic teams that did not medal, Robert Dover led the 2016 team to a team bronze and Debbie McDonald led the team to a silver medal in 2020.

But for the 2024 Paris Olympics, the few top horses had aged out and no young horses had as of yet emerged to be competitive.

Christine Traurig just took over a chef d'equipe for the Paris Olympics, and, as with eventing, it is to be seen whether she can bring new, young talent to the top, increase the depth of talent and take the U.S. back to consistently medaling in dressage.

One dressage competitor characterized organizing dressage riders to that of herding cats, so Traurig may have a difficult job to fill.