FEI Board approves to “defreeze” the Longines Rankings as of 1 June 2021

On 20 May, the Longines Ranking Working Group (LRWG) met via video conference to discuss the possibilities of “defreezing” the Longines Rankings following the specific request brought forward by athletes (International Jumping Riders Club). Statistics were presented at this meeting which demonstrated that, while not at pre-Covid-19 pandemic levels, the number of events taking place with Longines Ranking competitions has increased steadily since the end of 2020, with the exception of the six-week lockdown on events in Europe from 1 March through 11 April 2021 due to the EHV-1 outbreak. Additionally, the number of event cancellations has also strongly decreased and the Draft Schedules submitted for approval for upcoming Events increased, which are other indicators that competitions are picking up again.

Consequently, the LRWG unanimously recommended to begin to “defreeze” the Longines Rankings as of 1 June 2021. In order for the Longines Rankings to return to the normal 12 month cycle within a reasonable timeframe and without creating a sudden imbalance within the rankings, it was decided to decrease the time period during which Longines Ranking points remain valid by two additional months at each new calculation of the ranking. This means that it will take seven months to return to the normal 12-month cycle of the Longines Ranking (The first ranking calculated over the regular 12 months period will be the one published at the beginning of December 2021).

This recommendation was approved by the FEI Board today and the same procedure will apply for the FEI Jumping U25 Rankings. The “defreezing” of the Longines Rankings will not, in any way, affect the FEI Athlete/Horse combination ranking over the 24 month period from 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2021, which will be used to determine in which start group individual athletes will be placed for the first individual qualifier at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

FEI press release