08/28/2026
At the highest levels of show jumping, making a course more difficult doesn’t necessarily mean making the fences bigger. For FEI Level 4 Course Designer Guilherme Jorge, some of the most effective questions are created through details that spectators may barely notice like the length of a pole, the color of a rail, or where a delicate vertical appears in relation to the rest of the track.
“It’s very important that you have, as a course designer, the consciousness that even [when] you are building the biggest Grand Prix of your calendar year, you have to think that the horses are going to have to face many other top-level competitions,” Jorge said on episode 480 of The Plaidcast.
That philosophy shaped the $1,000,000 Rolex US Equestrian Open Grand Prix at Wellington International, where Jorge needed to challenge some of the best horse-and-rider combinations in the world without simply demanding greater physical effort.
Jorge had already designed his Grand Prix course when he watched the week’s 1.55-meter qualifier. Twenty-five of 60 combinations jumped clear. That result told him just how strong the field was. “I would need to make pretty much every jump count,” he said.
Rather than dramatically increasing fence dimensions or creating more demanding distances, Jorge adjusted some of his materials. The goal was to make certain jumps require more precision and carefulness while keeping the physical demand appropriate for the horses.
📎 Continue reading about course design at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2026/08/26/how-course-designers-make-a-grand-prix-harder-without-making-horses-jump-bigger/
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