'Selectors rather than computers'

Mark Phillips muses on a spring season that has been far from normal

- Pippa Roome

I’VE enjoyed being part of the senior selection team for Britain during the era of Chris Bartle as coach and Dickie Waygood as performance manager.

In normal times the judgement calls don’t seem too difficult, but there has been nothing normal about this season leading up to the European Championships at Haras du Pin in August.

We had a wet Kentucky with dressage and showjumping on all-weather surfaces, then dressage in the mud at Badminton followed by a big cross-country track, where 20 or 30 time-faults were the norm in wet then sticky soft ground.

At Luhmühlen, again we had all-weather surfaces in balmy sunshine, 23 of the 38 starters jumped clear across country and 12 went inside the time on a flat “five-star minus” course. That was after Bramham, where we had an Ian Stark “four-star plus” classic on serious terrain.

All these events have to be on the selectors’ “menu”. If anyone was hoping for a level playing field, they were out of luck! I guess that’s why we have selectors to make the judgement calls and not computers.