‘We cannot make horse sport safe – there is always potential for things to go wrong,’ warns Mark Phillips

Looking back at 2026, I can’t help remembering the fatalities and thinking of the riders’ families.

For a long time, we were lulled into believing a rider could not really get hurt over small fences. But realistically we cannot make horse sports safe. Regardless of frangible fences, helmets or safety jackets, when a 100lb rider is sitting on a 1000lb horse, there is always potential for things to go wrong.

Many accidents happen when riders are hacking, having fun or on a long rein – in fact, often the more danger people sense, the more they concentrate and the safer they become.

On a brighter note, we were privileged to watch Lordships Graffalo and Ros Canter reign supreme again at Badminton, only to lose out at the World Championships to Michael Jung and FischerChipmunk FRH. But the Brits regained the world team gold.

Recently, the new format for the Nations Cup played into British hands. Rather than points through the year going towards the final classification, the 10 qualified teams started on a clean slate at the final at Boekelo. The Brits won in a nail-biting duel with Germany, but the real excitement was that the counting scores of Yasmin Ingham, Katie Magee and Gemma Stevens were all on nine- or 10-year-old horses.

Next year the Brits will only contest the eventing Nations Cups at Bramham, Millstreet and Arville; not many want to make the long journey to Strzegom or Montelibretti.

Also on positives, we should have made more of our winning team in the inaugural under-25 World Championships. Let’s hope we can repeat that at Cornbury next year.

Steps for safety

On the domestic front, British Eventing (BE) halted the decline in membership and horse registrations this year, with a slight increase at grassroots level. It’s not surprising that numbers are tough in the current financial climate. BE has been losing members to the unaffiliated market for years and has long tried to “embrace” that group.

GO BE continues to gain popularity and in 2024 Pippa Funnell put together a task force of some of the best brains in the sport to help further. After a painfully long and protracted process, they came up with BE Lite, which enabled non-members and unregistered horses to compete with massively relaxed rules under the BE umbrella, as a stepping stone to full membership. It’s also a way for organisers to increase entries to help viability.

There were two pilots this year and as BE clarifies the advantages this winter, hopefully more organisers will seize the opportunity.

The BE board, with assistance from the BE Support Trust, British Equestrian and the FEI, has set up an independent eventing horse and rider safety commission, under the chairmanship of Dame Caroline Spelman, former Conservative MP and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The commission’s terms of reference are far reaching, but there are good people chairing the stakeholders groups so hopefully there will be constructive recommendations in the report published next summer.

Bids to host World Championships

I was very surprised to hear Agria Blenheim organisers Stable Events plan to put in an “expression of interest” to stage a multi-sport World Championships in the courtyard in front of Blenheim in 2030.

It’s dream worthy, but the cost of bringing in all the temporary structures on a World Heritage site would, I suspect, be prohibitive.

Also, I’m not sure if the three Olympic disciplines will support the idea, especially as Defender Burghley is well advanced with its bid for the eventing championships and is due to resubmit a request for the funding approved by UK Sport when they were runners-up to Aachen this year. The World Equestrian Center in Ocala, Florida – which has Aachen-scale infrastructure – is also submitting a strong bid.

That said, nobody knows if the FEI will go back to a multi-venue series of World Championships, as per 2022, or whether they will try and stick to the Aachen model, despite the high costs.

● What were your eventing highs and lows of 2026? Let us know your thoughts at hhletters@futurenet.com, including your name, nearest town and county, for the chance to have your thoughts published in a future issue of Horse & Hound magazine

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