Alltech FEI European Jumping and Dressage Championship: Course Design Preview

Bob Ellis, the 62 year old course designer charged with creating the jumping tracks for the Alltech FEI European Dressage and Jumping Championships at Windsor Castle in Great Britain, has a specific theme at the heart of his ideas. He is not prepared to give a lot away ahead of the big week, but he says “this is a very special location, and I decided a long time ago that I want the arena to reflect an English country garden”.

As a top international designer he has worked all around the world including the USA, Canada, Europe and the Middle East and he has built tracks for Nations Cup competitions, World Cup Qualifiers and Pony, Young Rider and Junior Europeans. This however will be his first senior championship, and he’s really looking forward to it.

Biggest Challenge

He says the biggest challenge he faces is ensuring his courses don’t over-stretch the less-experienced competitors, yet provide a strong enough test for the best riders in the world. “It’s not an easy thing to do, but its about getting the balance right” he points out. He’s happy that he has the support of his great friend, Irishman Alan Wade whose courses during the recent Dublin Horse Show were highly-praised, and his own assistant 34 year old Bernardo Costa Cabrel from Portugal. “Two great men – they’ll help me to do a great job” he explains.

Bob has been building at The Royal Windsor Horse Show for some years now and says the arena surfaces are second-to-none. The Martin Collins Ecotrack is so good “they nearly jump too well off it!” The surface is designed to have a cushioning effect and to reduce concussion to the horse’s limbs and it also provides great stability on take-off. British team member, Ben Maher, is quoted as saying that “many surfaces abroad lack bounce and stability and without that you can often undermine a horse’s confidence. Show jumpers would describe a ‘dead’ surface as one when you don’t get a push off the floor. On Ecotrack you can place a horse better, the ground is level, they get the same feeling over a jump and the horse can do a better job” he explains.

Preparations

Simon Brooks-Ward, Windsor’s Show Director, says “in April this year, our preparations for the Alltech FEI European Jumping and Dressage Championships meant we needed an additional arena, as well as extend our current collecting ring, in order to compete with the world’s best venues. Of course we reviewed the options, but chose Martin Collins’ Ecotrack surface once again to fulfill our needs. The new arenas were finished only a few weeks ahead of this year’s Royal Windsor and despite the appalling weather we had at the time, the surface upheld brilliantly, as it always has”.

Bob Ellis will be hoping for better weather conditions this time around, although when interviewed he was sitting in his caravan at Windsor sheltering from a torrential rainstorm that was giving the flowers destined for his English country garden a ferocious drenching.

Hinting at what riders might expect to face this week he says “obviously since there is an English theme there will be plenty of gates, and on Nations Cup day there will be liverpools and a small lake with a river running off it. I want the arena to look great and I want my courses to produce excellent competition. The bottom line for me is to produce good jumping and good sport and to provide plenty of entertainment for the crowd” he concludes.