If you’re on your way to the newsagent to pick up your copy of Horse & Hound, hold your horses!
For this week only, the magazine is coming out on a Friday (12 August).
This is to allow inclusion of full coverage of the Olympic eventing in Rio, which finished on Tuesday night (9 August).
Thanks to the efforts of our three journalists — eventing editor Pippa Roome, dressage editor Alice Collins and photographer Peter Nixon — who are in Rio for the duration of the Games, you can read full reports, comment and analysis on all three phases.
Where medals were won and lost, which cross-country fences caused problems — and what positives can be drawn from a disappointing result for Britain — are all covered in 27 pages of reports from Rio.
“We started discussing changing our on sale date for this issue back in May last year,” Pippa said.
“We normally go to press on Monday and come out on Thursday, but to do that with the Olympic eventing finishing on Tuesday would be to do our readers a huge disservice — we’d be reporting half a competition one week and the other half a week later, when it’s old news.
“For London 2012, we went to press through the night on Tuesday after the eventing and came out on Friday, this time there was a time difference to contend with as well, which meant the team back at home worked split shifts in order to staff the office though the night and get the magazine to press by 7am on Wednesday morning.”
Related articles:
- France take team gold as Britain deliver four clears to rise to fifth in Rio Olympics eventing
- Tales from Rio: the horse bought at auction for half a million euros who nearly died
- World number two out of Olympic showjumping due to injury
As well as the Rio coverage, there will be the normal quota of news, including the issue of showing riders who are too big for their mounts and reaction to new tack allowed in BD competition, as well as features, comment and reports from all disciplines.
H&H content director Sarah Jenkins said: “Every other week of the year, Horse & Hound goes to press on a Monday evening in order to be able to reach the newsstand and subscribers’ door mats on Thursday.
“With the eventing action in Rio not finishing until Tuesday evening, the team had to work through the night to get our 27-pages of Rio eventing report to press by 5:30am on Wednesday. By the time this is then printed and delivered, it will not be possible to get it out on Thursday, which is why we have this Friday on sale date on this one occasion.
“We know for many of our readers Thursday is ‘Horse & Hound day’, and so we are sorry to break with tradition on this one occasion, but we hope readers will agree it is worth the wait in order to bring you the extensive coverage of the competition in Rio. Our 27 pages of coverage include a pretty punchy comment from Mark Phillips, further expert insight from Tina Cook and Ruth Edge, fence by fence analysis of the influential cross-country track and coverage of every phase.
“We dissect Michael Jung’s brilliance as well as assessing why the British team, despite their best efforts, did not come home with a medal this time.”
H&H out Friday, 12 August.
