The problem is that there is just too much to do.

A rider at a major championships often has too many people to please, too many demands on their time and too many thoughts in their heads. All of which can divert them from performing at their best.

Willy Wonka, in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, understood this problem. “Invention,” he said “is 93 percent  perspiration, 6 percent electricity, 4 percent evaporation, and 2 percent butterscotch ripple.” All of which adds up to 105 percent and means that something just has to give. Something has to be dropped from the recipe for success.

On a daily basis at WEG there are team meetings, veterinary examinations, course walks, owners to find tickets for, families to be looked after and autographs to be signed—not to mention a little riding, training and course walking, all of which is carried out with an assorted team of support staff and coaches watching your every step and feeling they each need to make a contribution to the work.

Past coaches, current coaches and national coaches often gather round a horse and rider and vie for attention. Their sometimes contradictory instructions act like brain glue to the performer and severely limit the training and competition process. Of course they shouldn’t do this but it happens at times.

So the rider has to make decisions in relationship to their competition goal. In particular, they have to prioritize and cut some things out. The key element of goal setting and why many fail to achieve their goals is that with every goal you set something else has to be cut out of your life. There is always an “opportunity cost.” If you decide to do one thing and do it well new doors may well be opened and new possibilities may present themselves but other opportunities will be lost: not “may” be lost but “will” be lost.

So the elite performer has to prioritize. On a daily basis at the WEG the top riders will remain focused on what is required for them to perform at their best, and this will mean making some tough decisions about their daily timetable and who is chosen as their support team. It is a daily balancing act, an ability to walk the tightrope and balance team, individual and wider goals that the top riders are very good at.

In the long term, it is often an even more difficult tightrope to walk as elite competition goals impact on relationships and family life. Tough decisions have to be made. Mark Todd, the 54-year-old New Zealander, is first for his team in the dressage this morning. To make this possible he has had to leave his family and home in New Zealand and base himself in England. He has won everything at championship level in the past and then retired to train racehorses successfully in New Zealand. But the call of high level competition was too strong, and so he came back to the sport he loves, which has meant cutting out other things in his life which he also loves—such as direct contact with his children and home country and racehorse training.

For women in our sport the opportunity cost is often much bigger as the opportunity to have children may be lost. But some manage to walk the tightrope and do both. In the Canadian team the irrepressible Jessica Phoenix walked a very difficult tightrope when she discovered she was pregnant last September. With determination and excellent support she has managed to both produce a wonderful baby in the spring and still make the Canadian team.

Then there is another tightrope that every rider has to walk that is different from every other sport, and the way they do this says more about them as riders than anything else. It is the way they balance the often-conflicting demands of horse and rider. In all other sports there are many stories of performers going beyond pain, and the example of the Tanzanian marathon runner John Stephen Akhwari in the 1968 Mexico Olympics is often used.

He didn’t come first, he didn’t even finish second or third. He finished last! Having taken an early lead he then stumbled and fell, dislocating his knee and cutting his leg badly. Most of the people had left the stadium when Akhwari came hobbling across the finish line one hour after the last runner had finished. Later Akhwari was asked why he kept going. He replied: “My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start a race, my country sent me 5,000 miles to finish the race.”

Yesterday USA team member Kim Severson found she could not finish her race. Her horse Tipperary Liadhnan was withdrawn from the competition with an infected leg, highlighting the stark difference between equestrian and other sports. We can go through the pain barrier, but it is not acceptable to ask our horses to do this.

It will be the same for other riders on cross-country day this Saturday. They will try there heart out and ride with great courage and determination, but if their horse is tired or lacking confidence or just not feeling right, they will make decisions in favor of their horse and not themselves or their country. They will slow down, or go to plan B and take an easier but longer alternative fence, or they will simply retire.

They will walk the tightrope but come down in favor of their horse. It has to be that way because our sport is ultimately about horsemanship and partnership, not medals. This is why Kim Severson’s focus is now not on the disappointment of not making the team but on nursing her great Irish partner Tipperary Liadhnan back to good health. She will do this, and she will have another day at this level because she is a top rider. Our sport can be proud of the way everyone has handled this situation and looked after Tipperary Liadhnan.

In the meantime we have two days of a different type of tightrope to walk—the dressage tightrope where riders take super fit athletes into a packed stadium and the relatively tiny space of a dressage arena and ask them to behave immaculately, yet also show impulsion and spring and joie de vivre. It’s a trick that demands great horsemanship and long term expertise. It’s a trick that the best combinations will pull off spectacularly with performances that will bring the crowds to their feet and should yet again make us very proud of our truly extraordinary sport.

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William Micklem is an international coach and educational and motivational speaker. He is a Fellow of the British Horse Society and author of The DK Complete Horse Riding Manual, the world’s top-selling training manual. He found Karen and David O’Connor’s three Olympic medalists Biko, Giltedge and Custom Made and breeds event horses, including Karen O’Connor’s Olympic horse Mandiba and Zara Phillips’ High Kingdom. He is also the inventor of the Micklem Bridle, which is now approved for use in dressage by the FEI. www.WilliamMicklem.com