Jumping, dressage, and eventing—the Olympic equestrian disciplines since 1912—will be part of the competition at the Los Angeles 2028 (LA28) Olympic Games. The equestrian program will consist of six medal events: a team and an individual medal event in each of the three disciplines. Equestrian retains the 200 quota places it had in Paris in 2024, and the breakdown by discipline remains unchanged, i.e. 75 for jumping, 60 for dressage, and 65 for eventing.
The decision was taken by the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which met on April 9.
“We are extremely pleased with today’s IOC decision,” FEI President Ingmar De Vos said. “The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games were a historic success for equestrian sport, which proved very popular with the live crowds and TV and online viewers worldwide. It’s a great news that our numbers remain unchanged and we are looking forward to delivering exciting sport at the same level of excellence.”
The qualification systems for the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games were discussed at the recent FEI Sports Forum. The proposals will be put forward for approval by the FEI General Assembly 2025 and will afterwards be provided to the IOC for final review and sign off. The summary of discussions and the presentation made during the session dedicated to the LA28 Olympic qualification systems are available here.
Key facts and figures
With three disciplines and 200 quota places, equestrian will be one of the 31 sports on the program of the LA28 Olympic Games. The six medal equestrian events will be part of the 25 mixed events across all sports and the 351 events overall in LA28.
The LA28 program maintains the core athlete quota of 10,500 with an extra 698 allocated for the five sports proposed by the LA28 organizing committee (baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash).
A record breaking 50 nations participated in equestrian at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The number of nations in Paris 2024 was 49. The number of nations competing in equestrian in Los Angeles in 1984 had been 30.
Equestrian sport is the only Olympic sport in which men and women compete as equals from grassroots all the way up to Olympic level.
The event program for LA28 was developed based on the requests presented by the International Sports Federations to the IOC. The decision from the IOC EB followed the recommendation from the Olympic Programme Commission and the principles approved in 2023: gender equal, globally appealing, cost and complexity conscious, athlete focused.
Additional information on the full LA28 Olympic program is available here.
#WeRideTogether, a non-profit whose mission is to prevent sexual misconduct in sport through education, awareness, and resources, has partnered with the Fédération Equestre Internationale (FEI) to create an online safeguarding training course designed to discuss best practices, empower participants with free resources, explain why safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, and provide guidance on the actions we can all take to protect and empower ourselves and our athletic communities.
The United States Eventing Association (USEA) is proud to announce the renewal of its sponsorship with the United States Pony Club, Inc. (USPC) for 2025.
Mother, grandmother, and winning 5* eventing rider—these three titles don’t typically go together. However, Tamie Smith is all of the above.
Stable View held their spring FEI competition from April 4-6 in Aiken, South Carolina, and we were there to report on the CCI4*-S action as many horses and riders prepared for the Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event later this month.