The Australian International three-day event, which started today at Rymill Park, is likely to be given a higher rating from next year and attract even more star riders and horses from around the world.

It is one of six events with a four-star rating, joining two in the United Kingdom, and one each from the United States of America, France and Germany, but Adelaide was excluded from a world-exclusive Fédération Equestre Internationale (FEI) series.

However, before the horses had taken a step in the opening round of dressage, the chief judge, Christian Landolt, of Lausanne, Switzerland, said he would recommend to the FEI that Adelaide’s event be included in the world four-star program.

A four-star event is akin to a grand slam tournament in tennis, and with the FEI series a gathering of the best-of-the-best. If successful, it will give the Australian International three-day event its biggest fillip since it evolved in 1997 from the Gawler three-day event.

Landolt, a four-star level rider who had his Olympic judging opportunity in Hong Kong last year (an unwritten law says judges can only officiate in one Olympic Games), said it would be great for the sport if the FEI was to include Adelaide in its four-star series.

“It is a new series, created this year, but Adelaide was omitted and that is a shame,” Landolt said. “Anything that I can do as an official here I will. I need to do a report on the competition at the end of the event and it will be very favourable.”

Landolt, and other international judges, inspected the course extending from the Victoria Park racecourse and Rymill Park on Wednesday, and they were all full of praise.

“The flow of the course, and the balance of the questions (challenges for the horse) makes a good course, and this is certainly the case here,” Landolt said. “You have to show that the horse is correctly trained and can adjust all the time in the next distances that are set by the course designer.

“This course is reasonably straight forward and open with galloping on Victoria Park, then more difficult in the trees and olive grove, and once we come back into Rymill Park it is really quite nice with lots of questions one after the other, which is what a four-star event should be. The terrain is difficult and the time will be quite difficult to achieve.”