Individual, Open

The short-course format for the endurance phase was used again. In February 2008 the technical delegate, Giuseppe Della Chiesa and the course designer, Michael Etherington-Smith reduced the length of the cross-country course at Beas River, from 5,700 to 4,560 metres (with 39 jumps and a time optimum of 8 minutes), but the teams were only informed of this at the first Hong Kong briefing.

An early-Olympic year favorite was Britain’s Zara Phillips, granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II, and daughter of Mark Phillips, 1972 Olympian, and HRH Princess Anne, a 1976 Olympian. She had to withdraw when her horse Toytown was injured in training. In her absence there was no clear favorite. The leader after dressage was Australian Lucinda Fredericks, followed by Belgian Karin Donckers, and German Ingrid Klimke, the daughter of German dressage legend Reiner Klimke. Australian Shane Rose won the endurance ride, followed by Britains William Fox-Pitt, and German Hinrich Romeike. This moved Romeike into a narrow lead over Klimke by 0.5 points, with Australia’s Megan Jones only 0.8 points back.

As in 2004, the individual three-day jumping now consisted of two rounds, with only the top 25 riders on total score advancing to the final round, but with no more than three riders allowed from any nation. After the first round Romeike still led with 54.2 penalties, followed by Klimke, with 54.7, Jones, with 55.0, and American Gina Miles, with 56.1. The top eight riders after round one were within 3.6 points of Romeike, or a margin less than one missed obstacle, with Britain’s Tina Cook tied for sixth at 57.4 penalties. Cook and Miles went clean in round two of jumping, as they had in the first round. This forced Romeike to ride cleanly, and he did in the second round to win a most surprising gold medal, with Miles taking silver, and Cook the bronze medal. Both Jones and Klimke missed a fence on their second ride and dropped back to fourth and fifth, respectively.