THE contours of what is set to be one of London 2012’s most visually compelling events are taking shape in Sue Benson’s head, though not yet on the handsome avenues of Greenwich Park.

 

Last week, I accompanied the designer of the next Olympic equestrian cross-country course on a walk around the terrain at her disposal, along with Tim Hadaway, the equestrian competition manager, and Benson’s bright yellow measuring wheel.

 

The tour gave me an exclusive insight into the challenges that will face the world’s best three-day eventers on their winding 10-or-11-minute journey around this historic East London park.

 

It was emphasised to me that Hadaway and his colleagues are “just entering the detailed design phase” and some switches, such as the siting of the main equestrian arena have already been made.

 

Nonetheless, I came away with a good insight into current thinking on how this heritage venue - which has proved a controversial choice as setting for the equestrian competitions - will look at Games time.

 

Under present plans, then, the 23,000 capacity main arena will be situated at the River Thames end of the Park, to the south side of The Queen’s House, a 17th-century Inigo Jones-designed villa that is one of several historic features calculated, I fancy, to send TV producers into transports of delight.*

 

(The queen in question is Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I and daughter of Henri IV of France, rather than the UK’s present monarch, but no matter.

 

Indeed, this fact may console any Francophone riders queasy about competing under the gaze of General James Wolfe, “Victor of Quebec”, whose statue commands the heights beside the Royal Observatory.)

 

This arena is where all equestrian events apart from the cross-country will be confined.

 

In addition, as Hadaway explains, the riding and run-shoot elements of the Modern Pentathlon are expected to take place in Greenwich Park, provisionally towards the end of the Games.

 

London theme

 

The plan is to have an opening on the 90 metre by 100-110 metre arena’s south side to enable cross-country competitors to enter in the course of their round, which is expected to be between 5.7 and 6.2 kilometres long in all.

 

Two or three of the up to 42 cross-country fences are expected to be located here, with Benson hinting at a strong London theme - buses, cathedrals or somesuch - in their design.

 

The area between the other side of The Queen’s House and Romney Road, where it was at one point envisaged that the arena might go, is now earmarked for a temporary training area.

 

With stabling expected to be concentrated in the park’s north-west quadrant, the main body of the cross-country course looks set to be to the east.

 

In addition to those in the main arena, tens of thousands of additional spectators are expected to be able to watch the event - provisionally scheduled for Day four of the Games - from vantage-points around the course.

 

The start and finish of the event are set to be towards the Park’s southern end, on opposite sides of Blackheath Avenue.

 

Neither the first nor the last fence will be particularly testing, with both likely to have an Olympic theme, the first focusing on London 2012, while the last may look ahead to the host city of the next Summer Games in 2016.

 

The first combination fence - the third in all - should be positioned to the east of the bandstand and may echo the patterning of its ornate ironwork in its design.

 

Old set to meet new

 

The course will swing around very close to the famous observatory, where competitors can expect to face a fence with an astronomical theme prior to tackling what seemed to me a fairly testing descent not far from a kiosk now rejoicing in the name of The Honest Sausage.

 

This leads them down to a natural bowl at around the Park’s geographic centre described by Benson as “a perfect site for a key fence”.

 

Riders will not have time to take in the view from the top of the hill, but this consists of a panoramic sweep across a swathe of London, from St Paul’s Cathedral to Canary Wharf and the - already just visible - Olympic Stadium itself.

 

This underlines what, in Olympic terms, is one of the great strengths of the venue: it puts equestrianism physically much closer to the heart of the Games than is usually the case.

 

The water jump is set to be at the children’s boating pond back at the Park’s northern end.

 

This is an obvious place to highlight the site’s nautical heritage.

 

Moreover, the proposed take-off area, on the other side of the pond from a big sundial, looks to be just about on the line of the Greenwich Meridian.

 

So this may be one of a number of opportunities to position fences at which horses leap from one hemisphere into the other.

 

The course is expected to skirt the neighbouring children’s play area, which could provide the setting for a planned fence designed by local schoolchildren.

 

This could also be one of the few elements of the course designed to remain as a permanent feature.

 

However much hot air is spouted elsewhere about Olympic legacies, the ideal outcome for Greenwich will be if the Games can visit the Park while leaving nothing but the odd memento by way of permanent traces.

 

* A detailed map of Greenwich Park, which it may be helpful to look at in conjunction with this article, can be found here: http://www.royalparks.org.uk/docs/park_maps/greenwich_map.pdf

 

David Owen is a specialist sports journalist who worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering last year's Beijing Olympics