-- By David Stickland / Global Dressage Analytics
The 2024 Equestrian Para Olympics take place in early September in Versailles, France.
The Qualified Teams
Team qualification rules for the Para makes the able-bodied rules look really simple! Some places are already locked in: France as Host Nation; the top 7 ranked teams from the 2022 World Championships – Netherlands, Denmark, United States of America, Great Britain, Belgium Germany and Italy; and from the 2023 European Championships Sweden. Then the top ranked teams from: the Americas – Canada; Asia – Singapore; Oceana – Australia; unfortunately, there is not a qualified team from Africa to select so according to the rules that slot will go to the highest ranked team not currently selected - Austria. Finally the top 2 ranked teams not already selected: Norway and Ireland. So, those are the 15 nations eligible to send teams.
The 15 Individuals
There are also 15 Individual riders selected from the 5 regions. Assuming the Team selections are as listed above, athletes from the following nations should be eligible for invitation based on region: Africa – South Africa; Americas – Brazil (2 places), Mexico; Asia – Hong Kong and Japan (2 places); Europe – Latvia, Poland and Finland; Oceana – New Zealand. Because Africa and Oceana only seem to have one eligible athlete there are four additional individual places that can still be assigned: Hungary, Czech, Finland and Slovakia. There are finally 3 more positions that are filled by the “Bipartite Commision” following applications from National Paralympic Committee’s in March 2024.
The Team Format
The Para Nations qualified as Teams can send 3 or 4 riders, however only 3 can compete in the Team event which is the Para Grand Prix B for each Grade. All 4 (or 3 if there are only 3!) must compete in the Individual medal test – the Para Grand Prix A. The first event is that Individual competition that takes place on September 3 (Grade I, II, III) and September 4 (Grade IV, V). The Team event (Para Grand Prix B) takes place on September 6th, and the Freestyle (for the top 8 riders in each Grade from the Individual Competition) takes place On September 7th and brings the Equestrian Paralympic to a close.
Team Ranking Predictions
As I did for the Olympics, we can try to predict the eventual teams and scores based on the trends from 2023 (taking account of the restrictions on Grade requirements to form a team) – it is really too close to call. Great Britain, the United States of America and Netherlands all have predicted team scores within 0.4 points of each other for the sum of 3 riders, With Denmark, Germany and Italy only 3-4 points below that in Team score. It is going to be a very close competition. So, if you want to see exciting and close competition you had better order your tickets for the Dressage Paralympics now!
