As the world’s best prepare to compete in Blair Atholl next month Scotland’s greatest ever three-day-eventer believes he has prepared a challenge worthy of the occasion.

Ian Stark, the Selkirk rider who won four silver medals at separate Olympic Games and remains the only person ever to claim first and second places in the same year at the globally renowned Badminton Horse Trials, has designed the cross country lay-out on the Blair Castle course for the Longine FEI European Eventing Championship which is doubling as a final qualifying competition for next year’s Olympics in Rio.

The 61-year-old admits to feeling pressure along with excitement at having been asked and in plotting out a course which was partly unveiled yesterday has set out to build something which fits with his own attributes as a rider.

“My courses have a reputation for being big and scary to the riders, but the horses usually understand them and people say I design as I used to ride which is brave and bold,” he explained.

Not that he had complete say in that approach, he confesses.

“I think I had some pretty wild horses and people thought it was a bit reckless, but it was a question of them dictating how I had to ride them,” he said with a wry grin.

“Some of my great horses I wouldn’t want to ride now... I’d be too old, too windy to ride them, but it was just the way they were. They were ultra-brave so you had to learn to have an agreement between you.”

For all that dressage and show-jumping elements are also involved in a version of equestrianism that seeks to examine every aspect of the relationship between horse and rider, only those partnerships that have a similar level of understanding seem likely to prevail.

“They need to be bold, but I try to bring in the element of when I was in the hey-day as it where it was all big and bold cross country riding,” said Stark.

“Then the sport went got into a little bit of twisty, turny, pulling the horses around and it became all technical and fussy, but I like to think of cross country as getting out there and riding from A to B and being bold and brave and riding at speed but accurately.

“So we’ve got an element of the new with the twists and turns and skinny, narrow fences, but it’s all forward and positive. I like horses and riders to come off the course and think ‘Wow... I had to go for that there,’ but have a good feeling.”

The same might be said for Scottish equestrianism as a whole ahead of a show-piece that is on a different level to anything ever staged in this part of the world.

The senior European Championship has not been staged in the UK in the decade during which Stark has transformed himself from one of the outstanding competitors of his generation to one of the world’s leading designers and bringing them to Scotland for the first time is a real coup.

“We had to go to British Eventing, our governing body, with our bid and had to fight off another couple of British events to get this and then, as the British bid, we went forward to the FER, the international governing body and were up against five other nations. So to win that was pretty impressive and Alec Lochore, the event director, did a brilliant job of promoting it and putting the case forward,” Stark explained.

“It was a huge buzz because Alec also designs as well but it was considered too much for him to design the course as well as organising the event, so I was asked if I would consider it and it was a no-brainer. It’s the European Championships, the first time ever in Scotland and being a Scot it couldn’t be any better.”

No fewer than 28 Olympic medallists are set to take part including reigning Olympic and world champion Michael Jung and world champion Sandra Auffarth, whose presence contributes to the Germans’ going in as favourites, albeit a British team that will include Olympians William Fox-Pitt and Pippa Funnell has every chance.

However all of their rivals have even greater incentive to perform well since, with the last two places at next year’s Olympics up for grabs, Germany and Britain are the only two teams contesting these championships to have already qualified for Rio and Stark believes the competition will be all the better for that.

“It is the highest quality field ever here, but possibly the highest quality field ever at a European Championships,” was his assessment.

“I don’t think the quality of the horses and riders at the top in Europe has ever been better so it’s great that we’re seeing the majority of them here.”

While each country is entitled to field a team of four plus two additional riders the British contingent will be double that size, but Stark is not alone in secretly hoping that one of those currently selected drops out before the competition.

That is because there is currently no Scot among those home contenders and the first reserve is Wills Oakden, the Fife based 25-year-old who learned his trade under Stark and was part of the British team which won the Young Rider European Championships when they were held at Blair four years ago.

Without wishing any ill will on any of those who are due to take part the course designer’s experience suggests to him that Oakden is likely to get his chance.

“I’ve been on a lot of teams and never once has the initial selection got to the championships,” Stark pointed out.

“Wills came to work for us when he left school. He was my head lad for four or five years and left to set up his own yard, so I would be very happy if he got into the squad.”

The championships take place from September 10 to 13 and some 60,000 spectators are expected to attend in the course of the weekend.