Is there a time frame in which a horse cannot compete in a long format event? There’s one horse competing in the 4L at Jockey Club that also finished the Fair Hill CCI4L. Found that interesting they can compete at that level so close together?
No, there is no rule.
It’s been 4 weeks… I don’t find that unreasonable in the slightest… 
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Not sure if your remark is sincere or not. Could you please confirm?
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It is 100% sincere. A month is not an unreasonable amount of time. Europeans often turnaround even more quickly.
The optimum time for the 4-L at Fair Hill was 10 minutes 10 seconds. That is a significant task, in my opinion, and I do not think horses should be asked to run that long, nor to do the conditioning needed to stay fit, twice over in the space of a month.
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I agree if you were doing it every month of the year, that would be a big ask. But no one is competing like that. If your horse came out of the competition sound and fit, four weeks is a substantial amount of recovery time.
The bottom line is you have to know your horse.
Pull up some of the top Europeans in the FEI database and you will see it happens with a fair amount of regularity over there— not all the time, but often enough that it’s not eyebrow raising.
I’m assuming the horse & rider in question are the experienced 5* mount being ridden by the assistant at one of the top barns in the country. That team has the knowledge to know what a horse can or can’t handle at that level.
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Let’s be transparent. It’s Michael Pendleton riding 16 year old Steady Eddie, former mount of Boyd Martin.
I don’t know the rider or the program. Appears to me the reason for this is because they picked up 15 XC penalties at Fair Hill.
I read an article on Mara DePuy, who evidently did a fair portion of the Fair Hil XC before falling off. She gave her horse 10 days off, decided to reroute, evidently did a week’s flatwork, a XC school, and a gallop before coming. Perhaps that sort of schedule is fair enough for the horse.
You are correct that others do this. Michael Jung has, once with anazing placings (can’t remember but I think won or placed at Luhmuhlen).
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A relatively common European pattern is to run Badminton, then turn around and run the CCI4*-S at Tattersalls 3 weeks later, then compete at Luhmuhlen 2 weeks later.
That’s two CCI5*-L and a CCI4*-S in the span of about 5 weeks. A lot of American riders have a hard time keeping their horses sound through a single 5* a year; I imagine we have very few horses or riders who could keep up with that type of European schedule. We just don’t have the access to competition in North American to easily replicate something like that.
Another one of my favorites is how some Europeans will run a horse in early April, then turn around 2-3 weeks later and fly the horse across the ocean to Kentucky to kick our butts, then compete again at home within the month or so.
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My understanding is that picking up either 11 or 15 penalties doesn’t affect an NQR though.
could you provide some European examples of this?
Personally imo, 4 weeks interval between 4*L is not common or usual in Europe (unless pulled up on Xc and re-routed)
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In order to do Kentucky in the spring, they need 2 qualifying runs at CCI 4 star longs. So Fair Hill counted with the 15, but they needed another.
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Yeah I was thinking he’d done the 4L at Bromont but it was the 3.
Tim Price is one who comes to mind. He tends to run his horses back quickly, especially if he’s had a bad run.
https://data.fei.org/Horse/Performance.aspx?p=479FBA78B5F17284CD4E1EF1D23BBB71
I wasn’t implying it was common as in “everyone is doing it.” Rather, it is much more common there to have short intervals between competitions than in the US where we have less total competitions at the upper levels and more distance between them.
He was eliminated at Badminton. How early in course was he eliminated? If it was towards the beginning then of course it’s reasonable to reroute to Tatts then luhmuhlen. Your comment above suggests that riders are completing courses like badminton then doing other horse trials right off the bat and that is absolutely not true.
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This year in 2019, he pulled up Bango at The Lake, which was maybe fences 23-25 or so. The horse was getting very strong & had a stop at The Hollow (approx fence 8?ish) & went slow as a schooling round till The Lake, which was near the stabling, then pulled up & hacked back to the stabling. The FEI record linked above was a different horse (Wesko) & was Badminton/Tattersalls/Luhmuhlen 2014. Not sure where he got eliminated in 2014 on Wesko.
I will admit I have not paid enough attention to completion rates at Badminton, which is a big faux pas on my part. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
But I stand by my statement that it is more common in European than it is in the United States to compete at the advanced level on four weeks or less between events.
Louise Harwood has done Badminton/Luhmuhlen back to back with several horses. Several others, will go to Badminton then continue competing every month through the summer. Like this guy:
https://data.fei.org/Horse/Performan…120FD73592C96B
Andrew Hoy turns his around fast as well. Like Rutherglen, who ran 2 “old” CIC3* (including the Nations Cup at Aachen) and an old 4* between 6/6/14 and 7/15/14:
https://data.fei.org/Horse/Performan…27CCF5E39DE2EC
In 2016, Joseph Murphy did the old-3* Nations Cup in late April, ran Badminton the first weekend in May, then ran Luhmuhlen early June.
https://data.fei.org/Horse/Performan…9C8BD81F6157A5
Or even the brilliant Ingrid Klimke, who ran Sap Hale Bob Old pretty darn regularly, going up and down between levels leading up to now-5* or championship events.
https://data.fei.org/Horse/Performan…E8007FF07E350C
Boyd confirms what I wanted to say, but was biting my tongue so as not to spread hearsay— they are trying to get Mike Pen qualified for Kentucky while he has this opportunity to lease Steady Eddie:
So we have 2 euro riders (plus a handful more I’d suspect) who have completed a long format and then done another within 6 weeks over the last 5 years or so - common then 
The original post was about long format completions - not CICs. If the goalposts are changing then yes most definitely short format advanced, monthly, is common in Europe.
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Having spent time overseas, I would politely disagree about Europeans running back to back long formats in this quick of turnaround unless there was not a completion. While they may compete at advanced level events back to back to back, I think it’s important to factor in they have a proper off season for their horses, where we have events in this country all year long at this point.
I don’t doubt Boyd and team know how the horse can handle it, I was curious if the FEI had a timeframe in place. If not, i believe they should.
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