Officials from the Federation Equestre Internationale and the International Olympic Committee appear to be little more than observers in a political chess match that will determine where the equestrian events will be for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Beijing Organizing Committee leaders informed the FEI General Assembly in April that they want to move the equestrian events to Hong Kong because of quarantine problems, and the General Assembly promptly voted to approve a strongly worded statement that they were not in favor of the move. The IOC was supposed to decide whether the equestrian events would go to Hong Kong or stay in Beijing on April 19, but they delayed action indefinitely.

Mike Etherington-Smith, the cross-country course designer in 2000 and the eventing technical delegate in 2004, has been to Beijing three times since 2001 to inspect the proposed venue and other preparations. In an exclusive interview during the Rolex Kentucky CCI, he said that the quarantine problem “is not a new issue. I first told them about it in my report in 2001, and they haven\’t done a thing about it.”

The issue is the return of competing horses to the United States, Australia and the European Union because the Chinese government has said it\’s unable to create a disease-free zone around the proposed site in Beijing, mostly because of the presence of a nearby meat-packing plant and hundreds of indigenous domestic horses. The governments of these countries will require an extensive quarantine for horses competing at the Olympics if a disease-free zone isn\’t created two years before the Olympics begin in August 2008.

Hong Kong was a British colony until 1997, when it became a Chinese administrative region, with its own regional government. When it rejoined China almost eight years ago, Hong Kong, with a population of nearly 6 million, could have been one of the world\’s richest countries.

The Beijing government may be seeking to force Hong Kong to pay for the equestrian sports, and some speculate that when the Beijing organizers bid on the 2008 Olympics, they expected equestrian sports to have been cut from the program by then.

So Etherington-Smith believes that equestrian sports have simply become a political football between the governments in Beijing and Hong Kong. “It\’s all politics—nothing to do with horses—and it\’s all much, much bigger than all of us, way above the FEI and maybe even the IOC,” said Etherington-Smith.

Nevertheless, “If I were a betting man, I\’d put my money on Hong Kong, which will be very disappointing and very frustrating. The climate is nasty and not the place to be in August,” he said.

It\’s also about 1,200 miles away from Beijing, raising all kinds of logistical and credential concerns. The venue would be Sha Tin racecourse, in the heart of the crowded high-rise buildings of Hong Kong, since there is no racing in the summer because of the heat and humidity. The organizers plan to build about 200 new air-conditioned stalls, but the cross-country course would be 20 minutes away on a golf course.