Individual, Open

The event was changed with qualifying consisting of three rounds, with the top 25 advancing to the final, with no more than three riders from any nation in the final. The final was again two rounds with the total score for both rounds to count. Linda Allen designed the courses, the first woman to do so at the Olympics.

The course for the first round of the final was not difficult as 10 riders went clear, and the other 15 missed only a single obstacle, for four faults. The second round was a bit harder, but six riders still had clean rides, although there were some time penalties for three of them. German Uli Kirchhoff was the only rider with clean rides in both rounds, although he incurred 1.00 time penalties in the second round, but this still brought him the gold medal.

The other medals involved a complicated seven-way tie for second and a seven-rider jump-off. In the jump-off Switzerland’s Willi Melliger and France’s Alexandra Ledermann both had clean rides, the only two of the jump-off, with Melliger winning the silver medal on time, 38.07 to 41.46.

Within three weeks, Kirchhoff’s horse, Jus de Pommes would tragically die from circulatory collapse after a severe intestinal disorder.