According to the FEI rules, fifteen individual quota places of one athlete and one horse will be reserved for NOCs with a maximum of two athletes with one horse each per NOC. Only NOCs which have not obtained a team quota place are eligible to qualify for individual quota places.
The FEI Olympic Athletes Ranking will be finalized at the 6th of March, and is limited to the best fifteen results per athlete/horse combination in specified events within the period from 1 January 2015 to 6 March 2016 included.
There are fifteen teams already qualified for the Games; Brazil (host nation), Netherlands, France, USA, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain, Spain, Canada, Argentina, Qatar, Ukraine, Japan and Australia – while individual athletes from non-qualified nations have to battle it out on the FEI Olympic Athletes Ranking (Jumping) to make it to Rio.
The current four best NOCs on the list are (not qualified with teams): Belgium (through Gregory Wathelet), Portugal (through Luciana Diniz), Italy (through Emanuele Gaudiano) and Morocco (through Abdelkebir Ouaddar) - which means there once again has been a shift since last month that saw Italy on top.