Well the big day has arrived and its the start of the 2008 Olympics.

Here is some of the best content available online for all you avid equestrian fans.

• As usual the BBC has pulled out all stops with some great video footage available:

- Interview with William Fox-Pitt about his preparation

- Video: The disruptions to equestrian riders from a tropical storm

- Video: How to cool a hot horse down

- Video: Interview with Mark Phillips who is the coach of the American Team

To stay up to date with some of the English coverage keep checking the BBC Equestrian page.

• The Equestrian 2008 site is also a ‘must view’ and has all the event times, venues, and (will be posting) results.
• Fox Sports has an Equestrian has a mash up of news and a hero wall
• Yahoo7 has horsy news, photos and a list of all the equestrian athletes which is kinda interesting

ABC gets the prize for the most boring equestrian Olympic website! Not a single image / video or interview. Well done to them.

Also did you know that UK residents can watch the games online at BBC and in the USA they can watch it on NBC Online… If you want to access that content but you live here in aus, you could try a proxy server. (More about that later)

If you have a gold mine of fabulous equestrian info from the games make sure to leave a link in the comment form below!

The SMH has announced that Sydney Olympian Kristy Oatley and Edwina Alexander have been pre-nominated for the Australian Olympic equestrian team to compete at Beijing.

SMX have also published the Australian Dressage shortlist:

• Mary Hanna - Port Said 10
• Mary Hanna - Rambo
• Kristy Oatley - Quando-Quando
• Kristy Oatley - Don Bolero
• Brett Parbery - Victory Salute
• Rozzie Ryan - Donna Carrera
• Maree Tomkinson - Lanzaro
• Heath Ryan - Greenoaks Dundee

Great to see the mainstream press jumping on the Dressage bandwagon!

Yesterday The Age ran Olympic eventing trials back on track and interviewed local rider Shane Rose about his thoughts on the coming Olympic team selection for Eventing. The final Olympic team is to be chosen on July 4th.

Australian Eventing riders have taken out Gold in four out of five of the last Olympics (having missed out in Athens) and are keen for the world to know that they are back with force after the time out last year due to EI.

This year Australia has qualified a team in all three Olympic events - eventing, show jumping and dressage.

Shane has said “I think we will have one of our strongest teams at these Games that we’ve had for many, many years.”

Starting today eventing riders will perform Dressage in the Horseland CCI*** class at SIEC.

Its really Olympic fever at the moment and as Australia prepares to hastily host the Olympic flame on its journey through Canberra (the route has already been shortened because of the threat of disruption by the Pro-Tibet protesters) the media coverage for China is looking far from positive.

Olympic news isn’t all glum and the guys over at On The Bit have a interesting post about the Olympic Stables that have just been completed. The whole thing looks impressive with eco friendly construction and waste management while horses can enjoy aircon set to a comfy 23° C, rubber flooring, ice machines, 24-hour CCTV and even sensors on doors!

The Hong Kong Jockey Club, has invested a cool $US150 million to make sure these are the best Equestrian Olympics yet.