A week ago, the French eventing team won the last qualifying leg of the Nations Cup at Lignières. This weekend at Boekelo in the Netherlands, that victory is worth nothing: for the 2026 final, the FEI has reset the points of the ten qualified nations to zero. After dressage, the French sit fourth, 8.8 points behind Great Britain. Saturday 3 October’s cross-country, run this year in the opposite direction, will decide almost everything before Sunday’s showjumping.
Eventing Nations Cup: why Boekelo resets the scoreboard to zero
Until 2025, the eventing Nations Cup worked like a season-long championship: points won leg after leg were added together, and a consistent nation could arrive at the final round with a comfortable cushion. The 2026 circuit changes the rule. The qualifying legs, run at CCI4*-S (short format), now serve a single purpose: finishing among the top ten nations. Those ten teams then meet at Boekelo for a final at CCI4*-L, the long format, and they all start from the same mark. Zero.
For France, the effect is brutal. At Lignières, in the Cher, the team won the leg on 106.7 points, well clear of Great Britain (170.4) and Italy (194.4). We reported at the time on how the French took control from the dressage at Lignières. That lead of more than 60 points over the British has been erased. The FEI wants a final that stays open until the last fence, and it has got one: whoever wins at Boekelo wins the season.
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Boekelo 2026: France won Lignières, but the eventing final wipes out all their points
Winners at Lignières, the French eventing team start again from zero at Boekelo: fourth after dressage, 8.8 points behind the British, with a cross-country course reversed.
The French eventing team at Boekelo: four riders, two nine-year-old horses
The squad was announced on 28 September by the French Equestrian Federation, on the recommendation of national team manager Jean-Luc Force. Four combinations, of which three scores count for the team:
- Sébastien Cavaillon and Elipso de la Vigne, owned by the Syndicat Elipso 2024, the experienced pair of the team.
- Victor Levecque and Fair Lady des Broucks*Gradilis, owned by Gradilis Stud.
- Benjamin Massié and Helios des Chomies, owned by Véronique Real. Massié led the individual standings at Lignières on another horse, Figaro Fonroy.
- Astier Nicolas and Hitchqote du Coudray, owned by Étienne Grivot and the rider.
The gamble is visible in the names. Hitchqote and Helios carry the letter H given to French horses foaled in 2017: they are nine years old, and at Boekelo they meet the demands of a final-level 4*-L for the first time, with a cross-country that is longer and more draining than a short format. Jean-Luc Force made no secret of it before the start: the event is hotly contested by the foreign nations, and it will not be easy.
After the Boekelo dressage: France fourth, 8.8 points behind the British
Dressage was run on Thursday 1 and Friday 2 October. In the individual standings, Germany’s Julia Krajewski, Olympic champion in Tokyo in 2021, leads with Ero de Cantraie on 23.9. Behind her come Britain’s Gemma Stevens and Chilli Morning IV (25.4), then Yasmin Ingham and Brazil’s Marcio Carvalho Jorge, tied on 26.0. The best Frenchman is fifth: Sébastien Cavaillon and Elipso de la Vigne, on 26.3.
In the team standings, where only each team’s three best scores count, the gaps at the top are tight:
- Great Britain: 78.8 points
- Germany: 79.1 points
- United States: 84.0 points
- France: 87.6 points
- Ireland: 88.6 points
From a distance, 8.8 points looks like a heavy deficit. Measured against the cross-country, it weighs little: it is less than a single refusal, and equal to 22 seconds over the optimum time, spread across four horses. The Irish, just behind, are only a point adrift of the French.
- The three best scores out of four: each team’s weakest rider is dropped, which allows for one accident, not two.
- The dressage penalties, banked on Thursday and Friday, which no longer change.
- Cross-country refusals: 20 penalties for the first, 40 for the second at the same fence, elimination at the third.
- The cross-country clock: 0.4 penalty per second over the optimum time, set at 10 minutes this year.
- Showjumping poles on Sunday: 4 penalties each, on horses that galloped the day before.
- Sunday morning’s trot-up: a horse rejected by the veterinary panel is out of the competition.
The Boekelo cross-country run in reverse, a first since 2017
British course designer Adrian Ditcham, who has shaped the Boekelo cross-country since 2019, has turned his track around. The horses run it this year anticlockwise, which has not happened since 2017, when the course still carried Sue Benson’s signature. The ground is the same, the woods of the Twente region near Enschede, but the order of the questions changes, and with it the place of the water complexes in the horse’s effort.
That is the detail that matters to an event rider: a water crossing met early in the course, on a fresh horse that is pulling, is not ridden like the same crossing at the eight-minute mark, when the horse begins to tire and to lift its forelegs less cleanly. The American site Eventing Nation warns that the water complexes will have “a different intensity” this year. No pair has run Boekelo in this direction for nine years.
The optimum time, set at 10 minutes, is the other trap. The nine-year-olds in the French team are not used to such a long effort at this level, and this is where team strategy is decided: let the young horses run at their own pace, even at the cost of a few time penalties, or push them to close the gap on the British.
Sunday at Boekelo: the trot-up, then showjumping
Eventing does not end at the cross-country finish. On Sunday 4 October in the morning, every horse goes back before the veterinary panel, trotted up in hand along a straight strip: it must prove it has recovered from the previous day’s effort. A horse that is lame or looks too tired does not start in the showjumping. The team then loses its margin for error.
Showjumping follows, in reverse order of the standings. The gaps there are often slim, but on horses that galloped for 10 minutes the day before, a 4-penalty pole is enough to drop a nation one step down the podium. And the British are ahead, with the Irish one point behind.
What we do not yet know about the Boekelo final
As we write, on Saturday morning, the cross-country has not begun. We do not yet know how the reversed course will behave on autumn ground, nor whether the 10-minute optimum time will be attainable or will blow the standings apart, as is often the case at end-of-season 4*-L events. Nor do we know what instructions Jean-Luc Force has given his two riders on nine-year-olds. The cross-country results and Sunday’s final standings will show whether the reset format has cost France the Cup that she seemed to hold at Lignières.
French Equestrian Federation, selection for the Boekelo CCIO 4*-L, relayed by GRANDPRIX on 28 September 2026; Horse and Hound and Horsesport, presentation of the new format of the 2026 FEI Eventing Nations Cup and Lignières results; The Irish Field, nations standings after dressage (2 October 2026); Manx News and Eventing Nation, individual dressage standings and presentation of the reversed cross-country (1 and 2 October 2026).
Eventing is the most demanding discipline in riding, for horse and rider alike: dressage, cross-country and showjumping with the same partner. To understand its rules, its levels and how to start, read our guide to eventing. And if you jump fixed obstacles outdoors, even at a modest height, body protection is not optional: our comparison of riding body protectors details the standards and the models.
