-- Text for Eurodressage by David Stickland of Global Dressage Analytics
With the Dressage World Championships celebrating their climax on Saturday it is almost time for the Para-Dressage with the first competitions taking place on Wednesday 19 August.
As with the able-bodied Dressage, nations can send teams of 3 or 4 athletes, or 1-2 individuals. A team can have a maximum of 2 riders in any of the 5 Grades, but must also comprise at least one rider from one of Grades I, II or III.
Unlike the able-bodied dressage the first event (that uses the GP-A tests) is the Individual medal competition. The second test (GP-B) is the Team event but the all Individual riders that started the first test (GP-A) must also perform the GP-B test. The average scores from the two tests are used to qualify for the Freestyle with the top 8 going through – providing they are larger than 60%
The entries
There are 94 Definite Entries with teams from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and the USA. In addition, there are individual riders from Finland, Greece, Hungary, Jamaica, Latvia, Palestine, Saudi- Arabia, Slovakia, South-Africa and Switzerland. A full list of all definite entries can be found on the FEI website at:
The 94 riders are pretty evenly split across the Grades with: 20 in Grade I, 14 in Grade II, 19 in Grade III, 18 in Grade IV and 23 in Grade V. Recall that only 8 riders in each grade can advance to the Freetyle so the competition will be tight.
I have been following the scores of all potential riders and from that can make predictions. Of course, actual events play out differently from predictions so you can take this with a pinch of salt. I choose not to make public individual rider predictions as I would not in any way want to influence riders or judges! But we can make a prediction for the Team medals
Put them together for the Teams and sum the 3 best predicted scores and you get a glimpse of how the Team competition might play out:
With each predicted team score there is also an “uncertainty” bar shown. USA looks a strong candidate to take Team Gold, again, with Great Britain, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark ready to step up to Gold if the opportunity arises, or to battle it out for Silver and Bronze.
-- Text for Eurodressage by David Stickland of Global Dressage Analytics
Related Link
Eurodressage Coverage of the 2026 World Championships Dressage