Cross-country follows the dressage. The courses can be up to 25 kilometres long and are set through countryside with broken ground and obstacles common features. To maximise points, riders aim to complete the course without errors and within a prescribed time limit. Until Atlanta, competitors needed only face the cross-country course once, with that score counting in both the individual and team competitions. But in Atlanta, and again in Sydney, team riders and horses will tackle the course once for the teams competition and then again in the individual event.
Riders trot or canter their horses over flat ground and are required to finish in a set time.
The steeplechase is a three kilometre course over which three brush fences are jumped three times each. The second of the roads and tracks sections is run over a course a little less than eight kilometres in length. The obstacle section of the cross-country event is a 7.4 kilometre course with 35 obstacles, including water jumps with banks, drops and ditches. The show jumping part of the cross-country is not as rigorous as the show jumping event itself. Horses and riders have to clear between 10 and 12 obstacles and coming, as it does, the day after the cross-country, it is a stiff test of each horse's stamina.