Gianluca Quondam, responsible for the technical-sporting coordination of the Roman CSIO is the right man to ask about numbers and behind-the-scenes curiosities at Piazza di Siena.

“We put up a total of 263 stables for the CSIO and 306 for national classes. The horses that arrived travelled on 175 lorries of which 95 foreign ones and 80 Italian ones. In order to prepare the stables we used 3,000 bales of shavings as well as 800 bales of hay and 800 of straw, all sealed, packaged and dustless to guarantee the best possible bio-security to everyone working in the stables.”

Bio-security is a top priority in this edition of the Roman horse show.

“Due to the recent outbreak of Equine Herpes Virus (EHV-1 – neurological form), every horse was subject to a triple temperature check on arrival using a classic thermometer, a laser one and a thermo-scanner. There are three 24/7 veterinary clinics set up in the stables, stables that have a one-way system so that the horses meet face to face as little as possible. So the one-way system is applied in the stable corridors and on all paths to warm-up arenas so they have also been widened from three to six metres so as allow a two way system with distancing.”

Then, of course, there are also all the anti-Covid regulations adopted.

“So as to facilitate and spread-out arrivals, avoiding a traffic jam of horse-boxes, we lengthened reception time throughout the night and above all created an app with a booking system thanks to which each rider could announce or change his/her horsebox’s ETA . This way the stable manager’s job was simplified, avoiding the arrival of three or four lorries all together and above all their horses didn’t have to wait at all before being unloaded.”

So who got here first for the CSIO?

“Jessica Springsteen’s horsebox arrived at the entrance to the stables in the Galoppatoio area at 7 am on Tuesday morning. Arrivals then continued throughout the day and the night until 2 pm today which was the deadline for allowing horses into the stables.”

The latest on the jumps available and the arena. 

“We have about 70 different jumps, of all kinds, including the sponsored jumps, and in particular three water jumps and ten Liverpool jumps. A corridor has been created all around the arena where the footing is made of tree bark and where the Teams will all parade before the Nations Cup on Friday.”