Meh, they had some rough luck and at least in the case of London 52 he may not have been well suited to the type of course, but this type of comment seems sour grape-y. Overall plenty of the horses that did well over the weekend were also experienced 5* campaigners that were able to adjust to the different type of course and footing. And it’s not like everyone wasn’t aware from the get-go what kind of footing there would be and that Championship courses aren’t set at 5* height and length. Yes, GB has some of the best horses and riders in the world but the main issue was that luck wasn’t on their side this time, not that their horses and riders are too good for the competition.
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Great Britain sent 3 of their most recent 5 
winners and the horse that finished 2nd at Badminton. Yeah… they were really holding back their big guns. 
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This.
Phillip and Boyd are great riders who have done so much for the US Team. But just imo, there should be no names that are defaults, every time. It indicates how weak is the program and the rest of the team.
100% this. IMO.
Consistent team scores are about predictability.
The Tokyo Olympics showed great promise for Chinese and Japanese eventers as well. If they can keep their programs ramped up, Asian eventers could be a force for the long-term future. However I don’t know how the pandemic affected their eventing. They have shown great promise.
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Gee I guess Boyd being rated 7th in the world carrys no wieght at all.
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GB chose 4* horses for Rio and that didn’t work out either…
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People keep saying this like they’ve missed that Philip was literally not on the team.
And I don’t know what results you’re looking at, but Boyd is a consistent top 10 performer. In sure as soon as he’s not, like PD this time round, he won’t be on the team.
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Ros’s horse dominated Badminton. Yaz’s Kentucky. Hardly inexperienced.
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He does a lot of FEI events…so he is going to have a lot of points.
He has been on the team for over a decade and this is his first time with success…and he was the drop score.
I have nothing against Boyd, just points to consider.
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10th at 2010 WEG Neville Bardos
7th 2014 WEG Shamwari 4
16th 2016 Rio Blackfoot Mystery (he had 8 &12 in the 2 SJ rounds which dropped him). Looking at the final team scores, with Phillip’s 3rd place and Boyd’s solid finish, the US had a decent shot if one if the other 2 team members had had a decent result.
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Is Boyd’s Pan Am individual gold (and team gold) not a success?
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It is for sure not taking that away, but even Bobby C and Eric D have said the Pan Ams should be for the up and comers, so competition is not the stiffest.
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but could other riders been selected been more successful at the time? I’d have to look back and see who was in the running.
I think its wild to suggest that Boyd has not been one of the stand out performers in the US in the last decade. He has been consistently at the top of the big events and has a fairly deep string of upper level horses.
I think the fact that we’re able to debate between several competitive pairs is a sign of the depth and talent in the US at the moment compared to where the US was at just 4 years ago.
I’m happy with the team we sent. Quite honestly which two I would pick out of LMP vs Z vs Vermiculus would have been a bit of a toss up for me, but I think all the pairs that were sent performed well.
I’m sad for Boyd for his rails, but I’d be more upset about it if the rails weren’t dropping so much for everyone.
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As an outsider, I find it very interesting that Team USA were so successful at the championships very shortly after Eric Duvander left the team management, for unknown reasons. It does suggest he was doing something different and that whatever it was, it worked.
Commenting on TeamGB performance, there was 0.2 penalties between bronze and fourth position. Eventing, at any level, involves a rub of the green.
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It blows my mind that people want to “blame” 20 years of subpar results on the only guy who has won an Olympic medal in recent times and the guy consistently at the top of the FEI rankings and the only American to win a 5 star in how long???
I’m sure they were disappointed with some of their performances, too, but they alone are not to blame. Not by a landslide.
We just won a silver medal. Be happy.
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We won a medal for the first time in 20 years at WEG and first time in 18 years at a major championship. I am ESTATIC! Nothing but celebration to be had. I think we also have to remember than the year Boyd and Thomas were at the PanAms winning indiv and team gold, was a year we HAD to do well in order to qualify for the Olympics. Now that we have secured our spot for Paris, I am sure up and coming pairs will be sent to the next PanAms. I hope to see Thomas now rock around the Big Bad B’s over in England in the next few years 
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You missed my point. (And that is ok.)
I was not speaking about this team at Pratoni.
I was speaking about US teams generally, and I wasn’t saying Boyd or Phillip should not be on future teams. Rather, we need more team candidates of equal caliber going forward in the future. We need depth so that Phillip & Boyd needn’t be the default every time because we have a stronger pool to consider. That was the side conversation I quoted in that post, that I replied to.
This kind of makes my point. The US needs a deeper field of team candidates of the caliber of Phillip and Boyd.
The US had a good results at Pratoni, definitely. We hope this is a turning point for US eventing producing eventers that can consistently score high, even win, at the elite FEI level.
But for some time the US has had such a huge problem coming up with a team with every member of that caliber.
There have been Olympic and WEG years when GB could have put together two or three teams good enough to medal. GB has that much depth of rider and horse talent and preparedness. But between Athens and Pratoni the US wasn’t able to scrape together even one medal team.
Things are looking so much better now for the US team future.
Absolutely no one has said that. Not in this thread.
What is being said is that the US may finally have rider-horse pairs available for the team that are near or at the same caliber as Phillip and Boyd. Something that is a possibility in a world where Phillip and Boyd are not supernaturally ordained to always be the only ones with that kind of achievement.
It’s as if Phillip and Boyd have been engraved at the top of the team list for so long, some of us have forgotten that other team candidates can ride well and have horses of top caliber, too. That there may be future pairs that are as good or better than Phillip and/or Boyd.
No one has said that.
It seems odd that if people are merely looking beyond the Phillip-Boyd era they are committing some kind of heresy. No one is shading Phillip or Boyd. They are just having an objective conversation.
We can appreciate all they have done for the team without such blind worship that we can’t envision other future team possibilities. Possibilities that could eventually equal or exceed the achievements of Phillip/Boyd. That doesn’t pull down Phillip or Boyd, it just considers having a really strong set of team candidates, much more so than we’ve had for a long time. Why is that a problem?
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I think what worked for the US team was supporting each rider to train and prepare the way they wanted, rather than imposing a training schedule on everyone. It also sounds like bringing in some consultants, like Ian Stark, really helped.
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@texarkana Its a discussion I don’t think anyone is truly blaming anything on anyone. It’s talk, about the sport we love and follow.
Sorry @Willesdon you are tagged in error
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I was just looking at Mr Boyd’s FEI record. It’s not that impressive. He arrived in the USA in 2007 and has attempted a 5* six times and was eliminated in 2 of them. Is that caliber ?
My bad - fat finger on date.
