Mark Phillips watching the Belgian team trot up in Normandy
Former Belgian Eventing Champion, 56 year old Marc Rigouts has been named as the successor to Captain Mark Phillips who resigned at the end of 2014 as coach of the Belgian eventing team.
Marc Rigouts competed at the Olympic Games London 2012 for Belgium but has plenty of experience as a coach as well as a rider – he was the coach of the Dutch team in 1993 and 1994 and coached the Belgian team at both the Sydney and Athens Olympic Games.
Belgium has yet to qualify for Rio 2016, having had an unlucky time in Normandy and failing to finish as a team when Constantin van Rijckevorsal riding Goodwins Reef and Joris van Springel riding Lully des Aulnes did not complete the cross country phase. However the experienced Belgian rider Karin Donckers had a good year in 2014, finishing in sixth place in Normandy on Fletcha Van’t Verahof to claim eighth place in the FEI World Rankings at the end of the year while the young Lara De Liedekerke-Meier is also in the top 50 in 27th place
