From July 27-Aug. 11 and Sept. 3-7, equestrian fans from around the world will be able to witness Olympic and Paralympic athletes competing at one of the most iconic locations in the history of the modern Games. The Palace of Versailles park, approximately 18 miles southwest of Paris, will host the equestrian disciplines for the 2024 Olympic & Paralympic Games. The grounds of the palace, which date back to 1623 when it was built as a hunting lodge for King Louis XIII, houses temporary facilities on the Étoile Royale site at the western edge of the park and around the Grand Canal. The Palace of Versailles has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1979.
The Olympic Experience
David O’Connor, Chief of Sport at US Equestrian who represented the U.S. for 20 years as an equestrian athlete, visited the site and walked the eventing course as Chair of the Eventing Committee for the FEI. O’Connor won individual gold and team bronze medals in eventing at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and a team silver medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. He has attended every Olympics since Seoul in 1988 in different roles, so he is very familiar with the Games and was impressed with the equestrian facilities he has seen come together through support of the FEI and Organizing Committee ahead of Paris 2024. “They really thought about the welfare of the horses,” O’Connor said. “The stables are good, there's plenty of grazing around for the horses … all of that is at the top level. The arenas are top notch with the best footing, and the warmup rings are good.” The impressive stadium for jumping and dressage has a 15,000 person-capacity and is three-sided, with the open side facing the Grand Canal and the palace in the background.
“Obviously, it is an incredibly iconic place, for the world, not just the French. It is a stunning backdrop for the equestrian sport competitions at the Grand Canal, where the stadium is at one end, and you know, this small house is at the other end — it's just a spectacular sight,” O’Connor said, joking about the opulence of the 3,000-room palace. “From a spectator and a fan experience, it's going to be up there with London,” O’Connor continued, adding that Greenwich Park – where the 2012 equestrian competitions were held - had a much tighter, condensed facility than Versailles. For the cross-country phase of the eventing competition, “They're allowing 40,000 people onto the site, and there are places where the fans will be able to see probably 50% of the cross-country go around, which is pretty exciting.”
O’Connor said that the Olympic Broadcasting Service (OBS) “have been drooling because of the ability for them to project the pictures with backdrops using moving cameras. The television footage is going to be amazing.
“OBS is really looking forward to it! They always get excited, especially about eventing, because with a lot of other sports they end up using their static cameras in a ring or in an arena so it's the same picture all the time. With cross country, they have a multitude of backdrops and pictures that they get to pick from,” he explained.
The Cross-Country Course
The entire cross-country course spans 3.29 miles. It has 27 obstacles, the most spectacular of which is a jump into a 400-year-old fountain, which is still in working order!
“It is located at what they call the menagerie, which is in a natural amphitheater where they used to have a wild theater with unusual animals,” O’Connor said. The venue’s sense of history is “going to be quite stunning for people who have never been to Versailles or to Paris.”
Unlike in London’s Greenwich Park location, where course designers couldn’t dig into the ground, digging was allowed in Versailles because renovation teams cleared and leveled the ground before the course was constructed. According to the Chateau de Versailles press office, “the project has been designed to avoid damaging or moving a single tree in the park, importing any turf liable to alter the make-up of the soil and ensure that all constructions can be removed: at the end of the Olympic Games, the site will be entirely restored to its prior condition.”
The course was created by French designer Pierre Le Goupil, who is best known for designing the course at the 2023 FEI European Championships at Haras Du Pin in France. Le Goupil comes from an equestrian family and has ridden at the CCI5* level at international events. His father, Andre Le Goupil, was a member of the French Eventing team at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.
O’Connor described Pierre Le Goupil as “an artist.”
“He is really one of the more exciting course designers that we have coming up through the sport,” O’Connor said. “I think it's a really appropriate course for the Olympic level.”
Safety and Welfare
Le Goupil has designed the course with safety in mind by incorporating fences using frangible technology and the new thought processes of how horses see colors and shapes, O’Connor explained. “I think all of those aspects are really ingrained into this course.” While there were frangible fences in Tokyo, there is an increased use of the technology in Versailles, especially with spreads.
Course designers also have a better understanding now of how horses see color. “I think that has been one of the biggest changes,” O’Connor explained. “Everybody used to just think about just contrast.”
We now understand that horses see the yellow and red spectrum as the same color but can see different variants of blues and greens. It is important to understand this when using color on a course. For example, if you paint a brown fence with a red stripe, then they may not be able to see it at all. Le Goupil “has decorated this course quite spectacularly,” O’Connor said. “It has an old French theme to it, so he’s being very artistic in his thought process. I think it's proven in the color schemes - not the shapes of the fences as they are quite traditional - but the color schemes are straight up what we've all learned” about how horses see.
We can never make any sport at speed completely safe, however, “we're always talking about reducing the risks and we have been very, very successful at that,” O’Connor said.
“Rotational falls in the last 10 years have been reduced by 50%, and total horse falls have been reduced by 35%,” O’Connor said. “When you talk about those types of major changes, that's taking the risk management side of it very seriously. We judge ourselves continually all the time, making strides to be able to reduce the risk as much as possible.”
Olympics Predictions
In addition to the beauty and wonder of its location, O’Connor predicts that “it is going to be a really great Games because the level of competition is so high. We obviously have a very good [Eventing] team, with a mixture of young talent and experience. Boyd [Martin] is as good as they come and Will [Coleman] has got a tremendous amount of experience and talent that is all coming to peak right now since he started producing his own horses,” he said. Meanwhile, “Caroline Pamukcu is one of our young talents who has come up through the Pathway Programs that are managed and overseen by USEF. She has a Young Rider gold medal [in 2013] and an individual Pan Am gold medal [in 2023],” O’Connor said. “We are looking for her talent to shine through at the Olympic Games. She has earned her way here.”
Around the world, Great Britain is in a place where they're right in the middle of a 10-year run of success, he predicts. “They've got depth, they've got three champions that have all been on teams before, have won 5*s and won medals, so any one of those three could be successful.”
Germany is another nation to watch in eventing, he added. “It is the same thing in jumping, the top ten horses in the world are absolutely incredible.” The dressage is also expected to bring a high level of competition with several newer combinations in the mix. “The top of the sport is producing record scores, and it will be exciting to see the best of the best compete. That is what the Olympic Games are all about,” O’Connor added.
“In Versailles, the site will speak for itself as much as the sport does. We have 16 days of competition that people will remember forever,” he concluded.
NBC will be providing around-the-clock and unprecedented coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, with streaming available for all sports on the NBC streaming platform Peacock. Equestrian sport will air live on regular cable TV during several blocks of airtime on channels like E! News, USA, and NBC. Click here for the full schedule. To learn more about the venue and course construction, watch the FEI’s preview video.
(Photos courtsy of the Palace of Versailles press office, by photograpers Thomas Garnier and Didier Saulnier)