SHOW jumping begins next Thursday, August 1st, in Versailles with the team qualifier, with the individual competition starting on Monday, August 5th. The reigning Olympic champion, Britain’s Ben Maher, returns but he rides a much more experienced horse (Point Break) than four years ago, when he was pinned as the favourite and delivered.

This time round the favourites tag lies heavily on Sweden’s Henrik von Eckermann and King Edward, the pair that were in the jump-off for individual honours in Tokyo and cruelly finished fourth, before picking up the team gold. The 14-year-old gelding has won pretty much everything since, including individual and team gold at the World Championships in 2022, and back-to-back FEI World Cup finals in 2023 and 2024.

Who are the obvious challengers? Well the talking horse of the last few months has been Richard Vogel’s incredible big jumping stallion United Touch S, who won the Rolex Grand Prix of Geneva last December, a five-star Grand Prix in Wellington and finished third in the Aachen Grand Prix recently.

Championship riders

The Swiss pair of Martin Fuchs and Steve Guerdat come alive at championships. Guerdat, who won individual gold at London 2012, is the current European champion with the special 11-year-old mare Dynamix De Belheme, who has already won a five-star Grand Prix this year, while Fuchs is also a master at championship riding and a former European Champion. He rides the grey gelding Leone Jei.

In terms of the Tokyo medallists, Peder Fredricson’s silver medallist is retired and he rides the oldest horse in the field here, the 18-year-old Catch Me Not S, but the bronze medal-winning pair from three years ago, Dutchman Maikel van der Vleuten and Beauville Z, return for The Netherlands.

The Frenchmen will be gunning for gold on home soil and field a really strong team, headed by ‘the flying Frenchman’ Julien Epaillard and the speedy chesnut mare Dubai du Cedre, who won individual bronze at the Europeans last year and was runner-up to King Edward at the World Cup final.

We are still waiting for a first-ever female Olympic champion in show jumping. Among the standouts in Paris will be USA’s Laura Kraut with her Tokyo team silver medallist Baloutinue. For Australia’s Edwina Tops-Alexander, Paris is her fifth Olympic Games and she takes Fellow Castlefield, who was produced in Ireland by Susan Fitzpatrick.

A case could be made for any of the Irish. Shane Sweetnam should jump clear after clear, but with this new format, will he be fast enough? Cian O’Connor peaks on the big day and has a fresh horse, while Daniel Coyle has trained for this.