The A-Team is back and somehow January already feels long. Between Diarm's medical misadventures, Spike's family odyssey to Cape Town and Sam getting ID'd at 40, it's a suitably unhinged reunion… before we finally get to the sport.

From why flag penalties moved from 15 to nine, to what really separates a championship horse from a five-star horse, to Ireland's new high-performance era under Sam Griffiths, it's a state-of-play start to 2026 with perhaps more questions than answers...

Listeners sent in plenty of those questions, so this is Part One - the Q&A show follows next!

Guests

• Nicole Brown (Host)
• Sam Watson, five-star rider and EquiRatings co-founder
• Diarm Byrne, EquiRatings co-founder
• Spike Milligan, FEI team vet with decades of championship experience

EquiRatings Eventing Podcast:

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