Text © World of Showjumping

The 2025 FEI Sports Forum kicked off on Monday morning in Lausanne, Switzerland, where the first session was dedicated to the qualification systems for the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

FEI President Ingmar De Vos opened the first session by acknowledging the success of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris and updated the equestrian community on the current situation of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

FEI Deputy Legal Director Áine Power highlighted how the Olympic qualification system will be discussed and then presented to the IOC in 2025, while the Olympic format will be on the agenda in 2026.

In jumping, only minor changes to the qualification system were proposed by the FEI – concerning the distribution of team quota places. For the 2024 Olympics, the annual Nations Cup Final in Barcelona was a qualifying event on two occasions – in 2022 and 2023, with one team quota place available at each event – alongside the 2022 FEI Jumping World Championships (five quota places), the 2023 FEI Jumping European Championship (three quota places), the 2023 Pan American Games (three quota places), as well as three FEI Designated Olympic Qualification Event for different Olympic Groups (six quota places in total).

However, for LA 2028, the FEI proposes to re-distribute the team quota places which previously were gained at the Nations Cup Final to the World Championships – with the latter offering seven quota places for the next summer Olympics.

“As we have seen now with the Longines League of Nations™, it is the top ten teams that qualify for the league and the series and eight teams plus the host nation can compete in Barcelona,” FEI Jumping Director Todd Hinde explained when asked by the French Equestrian Federation’s representative and second Vice President of EEF, Quentin Simonet, about the proposed changes to the qualification system. “So, therefore, we felt that it was not a fair game to allocate just to the Longines League of Nations™ group of qualified nations, that it needed to be a fair play and open it up to all nations.”

However, Simonet further challenged the FEI’s proposal – questioning whether not allocating Olympic team quota places at the LLN Final is a good way for the FEI to market their own product. “Those teams are qualified with a sport reasoning, I would say, so of course this is limited to those teams, but, beyond the host nation, the other teams are, let’s say there in the LLN final with a sport merit – just to comment that giving a slot to those teams can also be seen as a fair way to distribute it,” Simonet said. “I think from a marketing perspective of the LLN that is certainly not the best way to promote the product,” he added.

The individual quota places for LA 2028 are proposed to be allocated in the same way as for Paris 2024, and no proposals were made to change the existing Minimum Eligibility Requirements (MER).