What Does It Really Take to Win a Medal at Junior and Young Rider Europeans?

Every junior and young rider stepping onto the start box at a European Championship has the same dream. The medal. The podium. The moment that makes years of early mornings and endless schooling sessions worth it. But wanting it and knowing how to get there are two very different things.

Yet, most of the athletes who reach those podiums couldn't tell you exactly why it worked when it did. But the data can. It shows what a medal-winning performance actually looks like, what metrics a horse needs to be hitting coming in, and how much overperformance on the day is typically required to close the gap. That clarity is something most combinations are competing without but it doesn't have to be.

At EquiRatings, we've spent years building the tools to define exactly that. Here's what the data tells us about what it takes to win at Junior and Young Rider European level - and what it means for how you source horses and prepare.

Junior Europeans: Where It Starts

Based on results at the Junior European Championships (CCI2*L) from 2015 to 2025, the average individual podium score is 26.8. In ten championships, the highest finishing score from any podium position has been 30.2 - a number that would only get you a bronze at Young Rider level on average. That gap alone tells you how different the two competitions are.

To make the top 10 at Juniors, you need to finish around 31.3 on average, and the highest top-10 score on record is 37.3. The competition is tight, and the margins between the podium and the pack are significant.

The most important takeaway is that the top-placed Junior competitors tend to significantly outperform their pre-competition metrics on the day.

Add together the average 6RA (average dressage score from the horse’s last 6 international tests) and SJ6 (average number of show jumping faults from the horse’s last 6 international rounds) for Junior medallists, and you'd expect a two-phase score in the low 30s. But the average finishing score for the podium is 26.8.

That's a gap of roughly six points which are not accounted for by incoming form, but by overperformance on the day (keep reading for a real championship example of this!). By the time you reach 11th to 20th, competitors are finishing very close to their two-phase average. Beyond 20th,the majority of combinations are underperforming.

There's important context behind why those swings are so pronounced at junior level. A Six-Run Average (6RA) sounds like a meaningful sample, but for a junior combination it may only cover 18 months of international competition and a lot can change in 18 months for a 16 or 17-year-old. They can improve dramatically across a single season in a way a senior professional may not.

Improvement is real and it's expected. But that doesn't change what the data shows. Even accounting for genuine development, what separates the medallists is still a big performance on the day.

Young Rider Europeans: Stepping Up

Move up to the Young Rider European Championships (3*L level) and the benchmark shifts considerably. Individual gold is consistently a sub-30 finish, with the average winning score remaining consistent over the years. 

Bronze trends around 33.3 regardless of the era. And if you can finish sub-40, you're generally in the top 10, meaning for a large chunk of the field, a top-10 finish is within reach.

When you look at the incoming metrics — the form data horses bring into the competition — the two key differentiators for horses finishing in the top two positions are stronger dressage (6RA) and higher Elo ratings, with the average Elo for gold and silver medallists coming in above 500. XC form is strong and relatively level across the top 10, meaning cross-country execution is broadly competitive at this level and the medal race is largely decided in the other phases.

What This Means When Sourcing and Preparing a Horse

The common assumption is that to win a medal at Junior or Young Rider Europeans, you need a horse already performing at that level. A horse posting sub-30 dressage scores and jumping records that match what the podium looks like. The data says otherwise.

The key phrase is within range. Because medal winners regularly outperform their recent form by five, six, seven points or more on championship day, you don't need a horse whose 6RA already sits at 26. You need a horse within an overperformance range of 26 - capable of hitting that on a very good day, even if their average is closer to a 30 or 32.

Cathal Daniels and Rioghan Rua are a clear illustration. In the build-up to the 2014 Junior Europeans at Bishop Burton, Rioghan Rua's recent dressage scores had been trending in the mid-to-high 30s. At the championship, they produced a 27.8 — over 6 marks better than their 6RA at the time — on the way to a second-place finish. That performance then normalised back to their pre-competition range at the next event. The overperformance was real, and it was decisive.

That's not an anomaly. It's a pattern. And it's why the question when sourcing a horse shouldn't be "Does this horse already win at championship scores?" It should be "Is this horse within range to do it on the right day?"

Did you know?

At EquiRatings, we rate every horse and every performance in international eventing. Our data doesn’t just show who is winning - it shows which horses are within range of winning, helping riders and owners identify future medal contenders before they deliver that performance on the big stage.