THE countdown is on to the January 15th deadline of having horses going to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games registered with the nationalities of the countries for which they will be competing.

A look through all the major Irish contenders in all three disciplines will show plenty of recent ownership changes to ensure all potential Olympic horses are registered as property of owners with the same nationality as the athlete who will ride them in Tokyo.

High performance directors will submit their longlist of athletes by April 10th 2020, while athletes and horses have until June 1st to get their FEI Certificates of Capability and minimum eligibility requirements (or qualifying scores, for example). Final entries for three team combinations and one reserve must be made by July 6th at 11.59pm Tokyo time.

In dressage, Brazil and South Africa have lost their team tickets following a failure of their riders to achieve the minimum eligibility requirements (MER). The rulebook states that NOC’s must submit the Certificate of Capability to the FEI by December 31st 2019, to show that at least three combination achieved the MER for the period since the 2018 FEI World Equestrian Games.

However, both Brazil and South Africa, who secured their tickets for Tokyo at last year’s Pan American Games and the Group F qualifying event, failed to get three riders to reach that MER. The places have been reallocated, in line with world rankings, to France and Austria. Brazil and South Africa may now only send one individual athlete each.

And in show jumping, Ukraine also failed to achieve the MER by December 31st. Their qualification for Tokyo came at the three-star Eastern European Nations Cup in Budapest, Hungary, last June when they won with 50 penalties. The Czech Republic finished in second place and are likely to receive that slot.