“The biggest change this year is the introduction of an Irish Bank” says Mike Etherington-Smith as he talks about this year’s CCI5* cross country course at the Longines Luhmuhlen Horse Trials.
“It will be interesting to see how everybody deals with that as there is a degree of uncertainty as to how the horses behave or perform when they get on top of it. Some will find their feet and work their way off it and the riders have to react to what the horse does and that takes some riding and horsemanship”
The Longines CCI5* course, which consists of 28 fences and 45 jumping efforts, is approximately 6,340 metres long and currently has an optimum time of 11 minutes 8 seconds according to the overview of the course just published on the Luhmuhlen website, along with drawings of all the fences on the CCI5* and CCI4*-S courses.
Mike E-S also provides more notes on the course with the drawings, explaining a little more about the Manzke’s Irish Bank at Fence 20abc, saying “We don’t see many of these nowadays and it will be interesting to see how the riders do here. They need to have a plan because as they approach there is no indication that on the other side of the bank having come off it there is a difficult skinny triple brush on two strides”
The Longines Wasser at Fences 4 and 5abc is the first big question, coming early on the course this year, the Longines Kombination in the Main Arena at 8ABC features a maximum oxer followed by two angled brush fences on one stride, the Meßmer-Teich (11/12AB/13) is ‘busy and intense as always’ and the Porsche Wellenbahn (14ABCD) ‘has a new look’.
Read more about the Longines Luhmuhlen cross country courses and view the fence drawings here
