Friday 20 August 2010

WEG2010 Eventing: New Team Submissions

The list of participating countries has now been announced there are some encouraging trends for eventing, most notably a few nations fielding a team for the first time (South Africa & Japan). Both these countries are not what you'd call well known for producing world class eventers, but then as so many event riders tend to be based in countries other than their own, you can't hold that against them.


Japan, is a very small equestrian nation by European standards with only about 15,000 riding horses registered, and about 4 out of 5 of those are used for pure Dressage. This can be a huge benefit for anyone selling a horse, as there is high demand for quality horse in Japan. A few years ago now, I sold a lovely horse that just wasn't any good at eventing to Japan for Para-Olympic Dressage use at Athens.

Oiwa Yoshiaka
Eventers are a real rarity there and they call it "General Equestrian" (according to Google Translator). The Japanese competitior you will probably have come across is Oiwa Yoshiaki, or Yoshi as he's known. He's based with Andrew & Bettina Hoy and made his Badminton debut in 2005, and went on to compete at the 2006 WEG in Aachen.







Alexander Paternell
Many of the South African's compete on the European circuit and perhaps the two best known are Paul Hart, ranked in  the top 100, and Alexander Peternell now based in Wiltshire, who completed Burghley last year and Badminton this year.

Denmark fielded a team in Aachen 2006, but this year is only fielding individuals. The Fins also only have individuals listed and, whilst I can't seem to find any details of the Finnish nominations, I'm assuming it doesn't include Piia Pantsu, sadly. I remember watching Piia at Badminton and thinking wow, what a fantastic rider. She very nearly won on her first attempt losing to Pippa Funnell by 0.4 penality points.

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