Rider's Galore

I am just on my way home from an exciting day in London. We had invited many of the Express Eventing riders to a briefing and photo shoot. I am sure that the inhabitants of 80 Victoria Street were very surprised to see the world’s top riders populating the foyer at lunch time in their boots, breeches and hats...it certainly held up passers by!



Looking around the room I realised what a fantastic group of riders we have coming to compete, I do not know when there was such a formidable group last competing in the UK. There were European, Olympic and World Medalists, winners of Badminton, Burghley and Kentucky, plus World Cup winners and the leading riders, on the FEI rankings, on several occasions. It will be such a fantastic opportunity to see all these riders competing, especially when you can see them over every jump from one seat.

The big excitement was the announcement that Tina Cook will be competing at the event. I have always been a big supporter of Tina, her performance in Hong Kong was fantastic. We are really excited to have her riding; I wonder which horse she will choose?

The photo call was fun. The photographer got all the riders lined up on the stairs, started clicking away only to have Vittoria, who had got lost in the upper reaches of Cardinal Place, arrive and force a re shoot!



I am sure that you will have seen the photos in The Times and The Telegraph, it was great fun, and the riders all entered into the spirit of things. I hope that they are now starting to get the feel that this event is happening very soon. We have a determination to create a greater awareness of the sport, pitch it into the regions of other leading sports, and create an excitement and desire to be part of this new format. We have riders that work each and every day striving to be the best in the world, however when they get there quite often they find that there is little recognition of their achievements. We hope to be able to start to change this.

Why should the leading footballers, cricketers or tennis players receive such acclaim when in this sport riders put their lives on the line and get almost no recognition? We need to create some personalities, let the public know what and who they really are, this way we will start to create a real following.

Photos done it was time to meet the press, The Telegraph and The Independent along with the Horse and Hound were there to ask questions, find out more of what was to happen.

On the way home I reflected just what we were trying to achieve, one of our goals is to create better awareness for Eventing and bring the sport to the people instead of taking people to the sport. We expect people to get in a car, drive out of town, park in a field and walk miles around a field to see a horse jump a fence every 4 minutes....in Cardiff we offer everyone the chance to see all from one seat, under a roof, and in the dry! I think that today we made a big step forward, it is a long time since the sport had a full page in The Telegraph (launch day) and a half page in The Times (today) for the right reasons.