Olympic Individual Latest Rankings With Four Months to Go

Judy Reynolds of Ireland on Vancouver K. © 2015 Ken Braddick/dressage-news.com

Nov. 5, 2015

By KENNETH J. BRADDICK

The latest individual dressage rankings for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro were released by the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) Thursday with four months to go for qualifying.

The standings as of the end of October of the top rider and horse combinations qualifying through the seven geographic groups or individual ranking list saw Ireland’s Judy Reynolds on Vancouver K and Ukraine’s Inna Logutenkova on Don Gregorius consolidate their positions.

Of the 60 starting places assigned to dressage at Rio next summer, the most ever, 40 are allocated for 10 teams directly qualifying, each with up to four combinations, and 20 individuals.

The 10 nations with teams already qualified are Brazil, as host, Germany, Great Britain, Netherlands, Australia, United States, Spain, Sweden, France and Japan.

Individuals have qualified so far from Canada, Mexico, South Africa and Korea.

The remaining 16 individuals spots will be allocated after the end of the official qualifying period on Mar. 6, 2016, 10 by geographic groups and six from overall Olympic rankings.

AS AN EXAMPLE ONLY, here’s how the system works using the latest rankings as if qualifying was completed, as calculated unofficially by dressage-news.com.

Geographic Groups

A-Northwest Europe 2 places—1. Denmark (Anna Kasprzak/Donnperignon), 2 Denmark (Mikala Gundersen/My Lady)

B-Southwest Europe 2 places—1. Austria (Victoria Max-Theurer/Blind Date) 2. Switzerland (Marcela Krinke Susmelj/Smeyers Molberg)

C-Central/Eastern Europe 2 places—1. Russia (Inessa Merkulova/Mister X) 2. Ukraine (Inna Logutenkova/Don Gregorius)

D-North America 1 place—Canada (Megan Lane/Caravella)

E-Central/South America 1 place—Dominican Republic (Yvonne Losos de Muñiz/Foco Loco W)

F-Africa/Middle East 1 place—Palestine (Christian Zimmermann/Cinco de Mayo)

G-Southeast Asia/Oceania 1 place—New Zealand (Julie Brougham/Vom Feinsten)

Individual Ranking List (after geographic group allocations)

1. Ireland (Judy Reynolds/Vancouver K)

2. Denmark (Daniel Bachmann Andersen/Blue Hors Loxana)

3. Belgium (Fanny Verliefden/Annarico)

4. Norway (Trude K. Hestengen/Tobajo Pik Disney)

5. Belgium (Jeroen Devroe/Eres DL)

6. Portugal (Gonçalo Carvalho/Batuta)

If the standings remain unchanged for the next four months, Denmark would qualify three individual combinations and thus able to start a so-called “composite” team in Rio.

Canada has one individual already qualified and by dominating the North American group is likely to qualify a second individual but faces a tough contest in the individual rankings for a third slot to field a team.

Belgium has two combinations among the six at the top of the individual rankings.

However, 13 designated Olympic qualifying competitions remain in 2015, 11 in Europe, one in Australia and one in Japan.

The Olympic qualifying competitions from Jan. 1 to Mar. 6, 2016 will not be named for about another month but there are 29 shows on the tentative calendar in that period, 17 in Europe, eight in the United States (six in Wellington, Florida and two in Burbank, California) and one each in Australia, New Zealand, Qatar and Japan.