Canada's road to the Olympics - Part 1: Qualifying

By Liz Steacie

The process to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games as a Canadian Dressage athlete begins with the requirements of the Equestrian Canada Nomination Criteria and Procedures.
This document is published on the Equestrian Canada Équestre website. To find it, you go to Sport - Dressage - High Performance from the main menu.

It is a 23-page document that details the requirements to attempt nomination to the team. The main body of the document lists all the aspects for all contenders in all the disciplines. These include:

• Canadian citizenship
• EC/FEI membership, license
• Compliance with any vaccination regulations that may be in place both at home and in the host country
• Riders must be 16+ years old (dressage)
• The horse (dressage) must be 8+ years old and have a valid FEI passport.
• The horse must be the property of Canadian owner(s) by January 15, 2024. Yep, still time to buy a fancy one for your favorite rider.

Assuming all the above conditions are met, you can go ahead and DECLARE your intent to try for a place. Declarations for dressage closed NOVEMBER 3rd, 2023.

In the document, there are pages and pages of contingency clauses and accreditation information before moving to Appendix 1 - Discipline specific nomination criteria.
In order to declare for selection to the dressage team, an athlete
has to pay a non-refundable fee:

• $500 IF the athlete has achieved 67% in the Grand Prix with at least 1 horse (in either a National show or a CDI).
• $1500 if the athlete has NOT achieved 67% in the Grand Prix.

Once declared, the athlete has to achieve the FEI condition of "Minimum Eligibility Requirements" during the time period 1 Jan 2023 to June 24, 2024. Refer to yesterday's post for more information on MERs. Quickly: 67% from both the panel and an L4 judge twice in a CDI.
The score chasing begins January 1, 2024. Canadian dressage athletes must have, at a minimum:

• 3 scores from the Grand Prix
• 3 scores from the Grand Prix Special
• 1 score from each of these tests must be achieved AFTER April 1, 2024.
• All scores must be from a CDI 3* or higher, and from a panel of 5 judges.

Now the kicker: ALL scores from qualifying competitions during the qualifying period will be used to calculate the combination's average, although athletes may drop 1 score (either GP or GPS, not both). So, if an athlete attends 5 CDI competitions, the scores from all of these competitions will be used, not just the BEST 3.

Elimination, withdrawal and poor scores will ALL be factored in (after dropping the lowest score). Elimination and DNS will be assigned a 0 and included in the average (unless dropped). In calculating the final averages, the Grand Prix will be weighted 80% and the Special 20%.

After all that, a final ranking for a three member team must be 70% or better to guarantee Equestrian Canada Équestre will in fact nominate a team. If that is the case, the highest ranking athlete/horse combination will be named to the team, and the 2 remaining team members and reserves will be selected by the HPAG, the High Performance Advisory Group.

More about this group in the next update!

About the author
Liz Steacie of Brockville, Ontario has been an active member of Canada's equestrian community as an FEI competitor, high performance coach, and sought-after trainer for more than 50 years. Liz has volunteered on a number of Equestrian Canada's dressage committees over the years, including Domestic Development and High Performance. She also served as Interim Chair of High Performance leading up to the 2011 Pan American Games.

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