As the FEI celebrates its centenary, one man’s name stands out when it comes to the development of equestrian sport over the last 100 Years - journalist, historian, art collector and creator of the FEI World Cup™ Jumping series Mr. Max Ammann…..

There are people who talk, and people who do, and Switzerland’s Max Ammann is very definitely one of the latter. Over a 30-year period from 1978 to 2008 he drove equestrian sport out of a culture of conservative complacency and into an era of energy and progress that has brought us to where we are today.

He didn’t do it alone. He had the support of the three FEI Presidents of his era, and in particular the late Prince Philip who championed many of his innovative ideas. 

And the story began in the fishing, farming and wine growing lakeside village of Ermatingen in Switzerland where his father kept horses on the family farm.

Two businesses

“For over 100 years our family had two businesses. One was local transport and the other was buying fruit and vegetables from farmers and delivering to big shops in Zurich and St Gallen. So we had five horses, and in 1945 my father decided to compete with them. At that time we had Driving competitions on a local and national level, and he competed from 1946 until 1955. He was quite successful and I was his groom”, Max says.

That led to father and son travelling to many big horse shows over the following years, and when Max moved to New York in 1964 as Foreign Correspondent for Swiss, German and Austrian newspapers he decided to drop in on the National Horse Show which, at the time, was staged in Madison Square Garden. “I met a lot of people including Bill Steinkraus, Frank Chapot, Kathy Kusner and Bert de Nemethy. So I started writing about horses and horse shows for (Swiss magazines) Cavallo and Reiter Revue and (American publication) Chronicle of the Horse,” he explains.

He returned to Europe for the FEI World Championships in Jumping at La Baule (FRA) in 1970 and the Olympic Games in Munich (GER) in 1972, and then in 1973 relocated to Switzerland once again when taking up the job of Chief Editor at Luzerner Tagblatt, the daily newspaper in Lucerne. 

Agreement

“I had an agreement that I would go to 10 or 15 horse shows every year, so I started with the CSIOs which were the dominant events at the time and then began going to indoor shows which were practically unknown. I was the only foreign journalist at s’Hertogenbosch (NED), Amsterdam (NED), Berlin (GER) or Dortmund (GER), but I wrote about the competitions and I could feel that there was something happening in the sport”, Max says.

What he was feeling was the change of mood brought about by the success of those World Championships in La Baule. The 1960s had been very difficult. 

“Most international events in showjumping were held outside Europe at the time. The ’64 Olympics were in Tokyo (JPN), in ’68 they were in Mexico and in ’66 the World Championships in Jumping were in Argentina. Also that year the big Swamp Fever (Equine Infectious Anaemia) crisis happened, and as a result no continental Europeans competed at the Eventing World Championships in Burghley (GBR) and no Irish or British competed at the European Jumping Championships in Lucerne (SUI).”

Change for the better

But there was a major change for the better in the 1970s in a number of different ways. Jumping grew in popularity after the thrilling World Championships at La Baule in 1970 and the size and scale of the Munich Olympic Games in 1972, which will forever be remembered for the devastating terrorist attack, but were also the largest yet, setting records in all categories, with 195 events and 7,134 athletes from 121 National Olympic Committees.

That led to a coming-together of journalists and riders alike, and during the FEI World Championships at Hickstead (GBR) in 1974 the International Alliance of Equestrian Journalists was formed.

The riders then decided they wanted the same kind of representative body, and at a meeting in Geneva in 1977 they established the International Jumping Riders Club of which Max was Secretary for a few years.

With the sport clearly moving in a more positive direction, TV broadcasters became increasingly interested in it. “When we were in Aachen or Hickstead we went to dinner together each evening and of course we talked a lot. We discussed the binding together of shows to create more interest, and that’s how the World Cup idea was born”, Max says.

Indoor shows became the main focus, and originally the plan was to create a Formula 1 motor-racing-style series - “in other words one worldwide tour”. However Bill Steinkraus felt it was too complicated, in part due to the cost and stress of transporting horses all round the world. So the League system, that still remains to this day, was considered.

Presented

In 1978 Max presented the idea to then FEI Secretary General Fritz Widmer who advised him to take it to a Jumping Committee meeting in Brussels, Belgium where the FEI had its headquarters at the time. They liked it and made a favourable report to FEI President, the late Prince Philip, who invited Max to Windsor to discuss it.

“I had already written the rules and he liked it very much and said two things - ‘first if we do it then you have to run it!’ and ‘now I’m going to translate it from American English into proper English!’, Max says.

Then there was the question of who should pay for it. Max spoke with individuals from the Mark McCormack group, founder of IMG group which managed top sports figures and celebrities but they weren’t interested, instead offering to sign up the world’s top riders. When that didn’t materialise Max turned to an old friend, former Olympic rider Anders Gernandt who was now a commentator on Swedish TV. And that was the turning point in the story.

“He put me together with the President of Volvo, Pehr Gyllenhammar, who invited me to dinner with a group including his friend Ulf Bergqvist, a Director of a bank and the Director of the Scandinavium Arena in Gothenburg. They listened to my presentation and I said I’d need 480,000 Swiss Francs which at the time was quite some money! After dinner we sat down and had some Cognac, and Gyllenhammar put out his hand and said ‘it’s a deal!’ So now I had the agreement of Prince Philip and the President of Volvo and that was sufficient”, Max says.

Concept

So what was it about the concept of the Jumping World Cup that they found so appealing? 

“I think it just had to come. I’m not a gambler, I only take calculated risks and I was absolutely sure it would succeed because there were precedents in skiing and football and other sports. And in the meantime I had talked to many horse shows in New York, Washington, to Gene Mische in Florida, to people in Toronto, Berlin, Dortmund and Vienna and they were all interested”.

And where did Max get the confidence and skills to put it all together?

“I come from a  little village on Lake Constance, and my father had a business so the logical thing when I left Secondary School was to make an apprenticeship in business. So I worked with an international transport company and travelled all around Europe for five years learning the job. Then I worked in shipping companies in Hamburg and Basel, so I had a business education before I switched to journalism in the early 60s. I knew how to make an offer, how to write letters, how to calculate, how to read figures in an annual report and I spoke English, French and German and all of that helped”, he explains.

In an obituary after the death of Prince Philip, Max wrote that when HRH was elected FEI President in 1964 words like sponsorship, communications, doping control, marketing and public relations were unknown at the FEI. “It was Prince Philip who brought the FEI forward, he was a visionary but also a very practical man”, he says.

FEI

Max left his job at Luzerner Tagblatt and, with a contract created by the Prince, worked from FEI HQ when it moved from Brussels to Berne. And as the years rolled on he was involved in the early stages of the creation of the Dressage and Driving World Cups which were based on similar lines.

“The Dressage people became jealous of the Jumpers because they were getting a lot more media attention and there was a lot of discussion about how the Dressage World Cup should be, including some wild ideas. Prince Philip was annoyed by some of the proposals made at a Board meeting so he told the Dressage Committee to sit with me to sort it out and I told them ‘Gentlemen, I don’t know anything about Dressage or how to develop it, but I can help promote it and sell it! And a member of the Dressage Committee saved it when suggesting we have a Grand Prix with the best going into the Kur which is the World Cup competition. So through the Grand Prix you preserve the tradition of Dressage and with the Kur you have what people like to see!” 

The next discipline that wanted a World Cup was Eventing. “At the Olympics in Seoul in ’88 the Americans wanted it and Roger Haller came to me asking for help to make it happen. Princess Anne was then President and I discussed it with her, but she rightly thought it would be too difficult because Eventing horses don’t compete every week so nothing came of it”, Max says. However the FEI Driving World Cup would become a reality. 

Seminar

At the FEI Driving World Championships in Hungary in 1999 Max heard the Driving Committee discussing the details of a seminar the following day. “I said to them what you are talking about is of no importance for the future of the sport, you need to discuss finance, how to create interest and how to get journalists to cover the sport!”

The following morning he got a call from Committee President Jack Pemberton asking him to address the seminar, and it went so well he was invited to create an ad hoc Committee of which he would be Chairman. Instead of inviting insiders however, Max opted to bring in non-specialists including the marketing manager of the Winter Olympics and, after two meetings, they put a proposal to a seminar in Wolfsburg in 2000. Not everyone was initially impressed by the new formula, but a week later the organisers at Aachen expressed an interest as did the drivers for a Driving World Cup. The series would begin in earnest soon after.

In the lead-in however, and much to Max’s amusement, a test-run in Gothenburg didn’t meet with everyone’s approval. “I invited all the World Champions of the previous 20 years and they were allowed to train from 11pm to midnight before their event. It was their first experience at a big indoor show so they drove like maniacs for an hour! Olaf Petersen was course building for the Jumping World Cup and he came racing into my office the following morning and shouted ‘it looks like a battlefield out there, don’t let those mad Drivers in my arena again!”, Max relates with a laugh.

The FEI Driving World Cup™ survived however and went on to become another major success.

Overview

Max’s involvement in equestrianism has given him a great overview. He’s passionate about recording the history of the sport and the two books he wrote for the FEI - “Equestrian Sport in the Olympic Games” and “The History of the FEI Championships” - have become a valued resource. 

Looking back on that history he recalls that not everyone played by the rules down the years. He talks about the Nations Cups staged in Harrisburg, Washington, New York and Toronto where they ran the classes with just three team-members instead of four “because they felt four riders with one drop-score was too complicated”. And they broke the rules even further when permitting women onto those teams. “In the summer of 1950 they had trials for New York and Toronto, and the three riders who qualified were Arthur McCashin, Norma Matthews and Carol Durant even though, officially, women were not allowed to compete in Nations Cups at the time - but I think the FEI were half-asleep in Brussels!”, Max says with a chuckle.

Talking about his relationship with the three Presidents of his era he describes Prince Philip as “the best the FEI ever had, an absolute leader and a thinker”. Max learned that HRH didn’t always mean what he said however. 

“He had his specialities when you talked with him. When he said “I see” he didn’t see at all, so you had to explain more. And when he said “I don’t understand” you knew he understood perfectly well, but didn’t like what you just said!”

Men’s Club

Max constantly describes the FEI as “a Men’s Club” during those years, and says when Prince Philip’s daughter, Princess Anne, took over the Presidential role she did a great job but had a much tougher time than her father, simply because she was a woman. 

HRH the Infanta Doña Pilar de Borbon was also a good President. “She had a less competitive background than Anne who was an Olympian and a European champion and was from a horse family. But Doña Pilar loved horses and worked very hard at the FEI”, Max says.

Back on the subject of three-rider Nations Cup Jumping teams, Max says he’s a big advocate of the formula which will be used at this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo. “Because we have to make our sport understood by the ordinary people, not just the specialists”, he says earnestly. “I sat for 30 years in press stands at Aachen and Rome and even there you have to watch and make calculations and that shouldn’t be necessary”.

Reasoning

“I understand the reasoning of riders and Chefs because of course it’s nice to give young riders their first experience and share the responsibility more. But you could do that by having three riders in Superleague teams and allow the lower developing level teams to have four”, he says.

And what if the three-rider format produces strange results? “Well that’s sport, and sport doesn’t produce justice, it produces winners!”, he insists.

Max retired from the FEI in 2008 but he never sits still. Editor of L’Annee Hippique for 30 years during which time he also produced “about 30” Media Guides and two books on the World Cup, he has continued writing and recently published an extensive history of the Swiss Equestrian Federation. As an art collector and art lover he was involved in the work of the Foundation for Naive and Outsider Art in St Gallen which supports lesser-known artists who are “not in the mainstream”.   

Speaking about the philosophy behind his successful career, Max says it was built on engaging everyone in conversations, and on his belief that “you shouldn’t hide and you shouldn’t lie! When you make decisions you have to stand over them and be prepared to explain why you made them”.

Max Ammann made a lot of good ones, and equestrian sport today owes him a great debt of gratitude.

Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ 2021

Sweden pipped Germany in a third-round showdown against the clock to win the opening leg of the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ 2021 Division 1 series at St Gallen in Switzerland today.

On a dramatic day of top sport in the Grundenmoos Arena where the tradition of wet weather conditions once again played its part, it came down to a face-off between Sweden’s Rolf-Goran Bengtsson and Germany’s Christian Kukuk. And super-cool Bengtsson sealed it with a brilliant run on his 12-year-old stallion Ermindo W.

From a starting field of 10 nations, only nine returned for the second round when the British opted to withdraw. And on a tough afternoon, when many of the teams finished with big scores, the closing stages turned into a cliff-hanger.

Testing track

Swiss course designers Gerard Lachat and Reto Ruflin set them a testing track on which nothing could be taken for granted. Looping turns and dog-leg distances had to be accurately ridden, and the triple combination at fence four claimed plenty of victims. The bending line from the vertical at seven to the triple-bar at eight and the following water-tray oxer at nine also saw plenty of action, while the penultimate double at fence 11 was also highly influential, with the flimsy white plank on top of the vertical second element falling time and again.

Team Egypt sprang a surprise when tying for the lead with Germany going into the second round with just five faults on the board, while the Swiss were in third carrying eight and the Swedes were close behind with nine at the halfway point. 

Brazil, Britain, Israel, The Netherlands, Mexico and Italy were lying in that order as round two began, but the serious business of the day was played out between the leading four countries, and it went right down to the wire.

Out of contention

The Egyptians slipped out of contention when adding 20 faults despite very smart performances from Mohamed Talaat and his lovely stallion Darshan and just four in the second round for Friday’s Longines Grand Prix winner Nayel Nassar who brought out Darry Lou today, the gelding originally competed by American star Beezie Madden.

The unrelenting rain led to several breaks in the competition to attend to the grass footing in the arena, but the horses coped well and the tension increased as Germany, Switzerland and Sweden continued to slog it out. 

Christian Kukuk and Mumbai matched their first-round score of eight but German hopes were bolstered by a brilliant clear from Maurice Tebbel and Don Diarado. However the troublesome water-tray oxer at nine hit for the floor for Andre Thieme and DSP Chakaria and when Philipp Weishaupt’s Asathir clipped the second element of the penultimate double then Germany had to add eight more to their scoreline for a total of 13.

That left them on level pegging with the Swedes who added just four, thanks to superb double-clears from both pathfinder Douglas Lindelow and Casquo Blue and anchor rider Malin Baryard-Johnsson with the feisty mare H&M Indiana. Both Evelina Tovek and Winnetou de la Hamente Z and Bengtsson and Ermindo had a pole down, but just one of those four-fault results had to be added when taking the best three scores into account.

Delight

Meanwhile the Swiss crowd, small in numbers due to pandemic restrictions but full of voice for their home runners, screamed with delight when their hero and individual European champion Martin Fuchs returned a double-clear with his exciting gelding Leone Jei. 

Luck played its part however, the fabulous grey clearing the open water at fence five with another spectacular leap but creating heart-stopping moments along the way  when hitting the back bar of the water-tray oxer at nine very hard, and also tapping the top of the plank at the second-last which had fallen so easily for many others.

When compatriot, Steve Guerdat, retired Venard de Cerisy after having two down, then the four faults collected by both Bryan Balsiger and Twentytwo des Biches and Beat Mandli with Dsarie had to be counted bringing their scoreline to 16. Assured of third place, the home team would now sit back and watch Germany and Sweden decide the final result. 

Jump-Off

First into the third-round jump-off, Bengtsson didn’t flinch, setting off with a determined run that saw him take a risky right-hand turn to the vertical second-last and clearing the final Longines oxer in a fast 43.50 seconds. It was vintage stuff from the man whose career highlights include the individual European title in 2011, team and individual silver at separate Olympic Games and fourth individually at the 2014 FEI World Equestrian Games™ with brilliant horses like Ninja la Silla and Casall ASK. And the 12-year-old stallion Ermindo W certainly gave his all today.

Germany’s Kukuk also set off with fire in his belly, but when Mumbai hit the third fence then he took his foot off the gas to complete the course with an additional time fault. Second place would have to be good enough for his country on this highly competitive afternoon.

The right man

Talking about the choice of Bengtsson for the jump-off, team-mate Douglas Lindelow said he was the right man for the job. “Rolf is very experienced and always very calm, and he performed splendidly and put plenty of pressure on Christian”, he said. 

Swedish Chef d’Equipe, Henrik Ankarcrona, was thrilled with his team. “We have never won the Nations Cup here and my riders were fantastic today. The Organising Committee did a great job for the second round, taking the time to have a longer break to take care of the footing and it turned out very well” he said. 

Meanwhile the hosts were also very happy. 

“My horse is still inexperienced at that level but he showed all his potential today. Sometimes it is not easy to handle his temperament, but today we managed it”, said Martin Fuchs. He is planning to take Leone Jei to the FEI European Championships in Riesenbeck, Germany later this year. “I rode him here two years ago in the young horses classes at St Gallen, so it’s special to come back and jump a double-clear in the Nations Cup with him today!”, Fuchs added.

And it was a special day for Swiss team manager Michel Sorg too. “This was my first time as Chef d Equipe at a 5* show, and being at home made it even more special.

“We are so grateful that the sport could take place, and with some public it was even nicer and we are happy with our results this week. Next week we are going to La Baule and we will have Martin, Steve, Beat and Elian Bauman as Elian was so good here in the Grand Prix”, he said.

However they’ll have to face the Swedes again at the French fixture. And on current form, they’ll prove tough nuts to crack.

Result

With the equestrian sports calendar suddenly bursting into action again after the many complications imposed by the pandemic over the last year, this week all eyes are on St Gallen in Switzerland where the much-anticipated Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ 2021 series gets underway.

And there is great news for the show organisers, as it has been officially confirmed that a limited public audience will be permitted to the showgrounds at the Gründenmoos. 

This will be a season like no other, with just four of the seven legs of the Europe Division 1 series going ahead following the cancellation of the rounds at both Falsterbo (SWE) and Hickstead (GBR) in July and Dublin (IRL) in August, and some of the parameters have been changed. 

Updated

The Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ Covid-19 By-Laws have been updated to allow for invitations to be re-allocated so that every Division 1 country can compete in the same number of events. The updated allocation list is published here.

Therefore this season, Division 1 nations will compete in three events each instead of four, and teams will consist of four athletes instead of five with a maximum of 10 teams at each leg.

The new system offers more countries the opportunity to compete before the Tokyo Olympic Games which begin in July, and Chefs d’Equipe and selectors will be watching every horse and every rider very closely. 

Quality

The quality of the 10-nation line-up for St Gallen confirms that fact, and it’s likely to be a mighty clash when the Europe Division 1 sides of Germany, Great Britain, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden and the hosts from Switzerland take on the non-Division 1 teams from Brazil, Egypt, Israel and Mexico next Sunday afternoon.

With the exception of Italy, all of these countries will face each other again in Tokyo in the first week of August, and every outing in the lead-up to final Olympic selection will be a crucial one. There’s also the psychological advantage of having beaten your rivals for Olympic glory in the lead-up to the Games. And there’s a lot of confidence to be gained by a good result at each leg of this summer’s series which will move on to La Baule (FRA) on Friday 11 June, then to Sopot (POL) on Sunday 20 June and finally Rotterdam (NED) on 2 July.

No chances

The Swiss are taking no chances on home ground as Chef d’Equipe Michel Sorg sends out the No. 1 and No. 3 riders in the Longines world rankings, Steve Guerdat and Martin Fuchs, along with Bryan Balsiger and Beat Mandli. And there’s a mass of experience in both Henrik Ankarcrona’s Swedish side of Malin Baryard-Johnsson, Rolf-Goran Bengtsson, Douglas Lindelow and Evelina Tovek and in Rob Ehrens’ Dutch foursome of Bart Bles, Jeroen Dubbeldam, Kevin Jochems and Jur Vrieling.  

The British have been rebuilding steadily, and Di Lampard has chosen Scott Brash, Harry Charles, William Funnell and Holly Smith to fly the flag, while Germany’s Otto Becker sends Christian Kukuk, Maurice Tebbel, Andre Thieme and Philipp Weishaupt and they will definitely have to be taken seriously.

However the best teams in the world know that there is nothing predictable about Nations Cup Jumping, that’s the charm of it as it makes compelling viewing and stirs national pride.

Qualification

The 2021 series will not count toward qualification for the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ Final which once again returns to the Real Club de Polo in Barcelona (ESP) from 30 September to 3 October. Instead, all ten Division 1 teams - Belgium, France, Great Britain, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden - will be eligible to compete for the prestigious title that last went to Team Ireland in 2019.

And this year’s Final will also decide which nation is relegated to the EEF Series in 2022. Previously that was the fate of the country that finished bottom of the Division 1 standings at the end of the season, but this time around it will be the tenth-placed team in Barcelona, so the Final will have an even sharper edge to it.

It’s going to be quite different, but it’s also going to be very much the same as the best of the best go head-to-head over the four legs of fantastic sport and then chase down the ultimate prize, the title of Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ 2021 champions.

The action at St Gallen kicks off at 13.30 local time on Sunday 6 June, and if you can’t be there then you can follow every exciting moment on www.feitv.org

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Longines FEI World Endurance Championship 2021

The defending champions from Spain claimed team gold once again at the Longines FEI Endurance World Championship 2021 at San Rossore in Pisa, Italy today where the UAE dominated the individual podium when clinching the top two places.

This was the first championship to run under the new FEI Endurance Rules, and history was made when Boni Viada de Vivero became the first Chilean rider to stand on a World Championship podium when scooping individual bronze, while Brazil also celebrated their first-ever medals when taking team silver ahead of France.

In a dramatic competition it seemed that the individual title looked set to also fall into Spanish hands when Omar Blanco Rodrigo and his brilliant grey, For Ferro, moved up from fifth to first after the second loop and stayed out in front until the closing stages. However the speed and supreme fitness of the UAE horses, Haleh who clinched gold for Salem Hamad Saeed Malhoof Al Kitbi, and Birmann Aya who slotted into silver medal spot for Mansour Saeed Mohd Al Faresi, saw them surge ahead in the final loop to finish neck-and-neck and hand-in-hand without a challenger in sight.

Heart rate 

Haleh’s heart rate never went above 50 beats per minute and at the very end of the 160km test registered just 47. At the final vet-check the 10-year-old Australian-bred gelding looked completely unfazed as he nibbled some grass while the French-bred Birmann Aya, who has a tremendous record for speedy finishes, was also chilled with a heart-rate of 54.

Chile’s Viada de Vivero produced the most mature of rides, and the 27-year-old got a great reception from the Italian supporters as he is based in Italy. Lying 19th after the first loop he improved to 17th, 16th, 10th and then fifth before clinching third and bronze with the nine-year-old As Embrujo.

Al Kitbi was never far off the lead however, finishing the first two phases in third place, moving into second after loop three and staying there until the final push over the 20km sixth-phase course. In contrast Al Faresi, who is also 25 years old, was lying 13th after the first loop but improved to third by loop four and in the end only one-hundredth of a second separated him from his gold-medal-winning compatriot.

Team

But the individual gold and silver medallists were the only two of the five-man UAE team to complete. A total of 12 countries contested the team title but just three finished, and it was a major battle for the medal placings. The strong side from Bahrain were big favourites, but HH Sheikh Nasser Bin Hamad Al Khalifa retired and his four running mates were all eliminated. The gold and silver medallists from Spain and Brazil each finished with just the essential three team-members while the bronze medallists from France completed with an impressive four.

And although the Spanish appeared to be running away with it at the outset, they were under intense pressure when their two main contenders were eliminated for metabolic issues for their horses. Jaume Punti Dachs and Alex Luque Moral claimed individual gold and silver along with team gold at the last World Championships in Samorin, Slovakia five years ago, but Luque Moral’s Eryvan was vetted-out after Phase 4 and the Punti Dachs’ JM Bucefala experienced the same fate after Phase 5 today. 

So Blanco Rodrigo could take no chances with For Ferro over the last 20km, he must finish safely if his team was to stay in with a chance, and when he clinched individual sixth spot and Angel Soy Coll, another member of the victorious 2016 team, finished fourth with Warrens Hill Chayze that bolstered the Spanish effort. 

Desperately close

It was desperately close however, because the third score posted by 2008 and 2010 individual gold medallist Maria Alvarez Ponton was critical and there was huge tension while her horse, Mandany, was closely examined at the final vet-check. But a big roar went up when he was passed, leaving her in individual 15th place and finalising the total team time of 23:10:34 which left Spain in gold but just 3:01 ahead of Brazil in silver while the French posted 23:43:01 for the bronze.

The Brazilians lost Rodrigo Moreira Barreto at the first vet-gate but Philippe de Azevedo Morgulis (Saiph SBV), Andre Vidiz (Chambord Endurance) and Renato Salvador (Uzes Trio) stood firm to finish eighth, ninth and tenth respectively, thereby giving the victorious Spanish a real run for their money.

The French, who claimed team silver at the last four World Championships, lost Charles Cappeau and Camil des Ormeaux after the fourth loop, but Nicolas Ballarin (Anir de la Teuliere), Gaele Ollivier Jacob (Pot Made), Margot Thomas (Kalon Milin Avel) and Roman Lafaure (Akim Cabirat) all completed to ensure their place on the podium.

Dream result

For the new individual champion Al Kitbi it was a dream result. “I’m in this sport now 11 years and this is my first World Championship and I’m so proud of it!”, he said. The final loop was particularly tough. “Until the last five kilometres the rest were pushing and making it hard for us, and in the final vet-check I was so nervous I thought my heart might burst!”

For Chile’s Boni Viada de Vivero today was a day he will always remember. “I can hardly believe it! I knew I had a good horse but to have one that’s in the top-three in the world - now that is just incredible!”, he said.

Results here 

The line-up for the Longines FEI Endurance World Championship in Pisa, Italy has been confirmed, with competitors from 32 countries and five continents ready to challenge for the 2021 individual and team world titles on Saturday May 22.

Amongst them are the 2016 World Champion, Spain’s Jaume Punti Dachs, and his wife Maria Alvarez Ponton who has taken individual gold twice during her successful career - first at Terengganu in Malaysia in 2008 and again in Kentucky, USA in 2010. Also vying for top spot this time out will be Alex Luque Moral from Spain and Bahrain’s Sheikh Nasser Bin Hamad Al Khalifa who respectively took silver and bronze at the 2016 World Championships in Samorin, Slovakia. A total of 13 nations will be chasing down the team title.

The event will be staged in the magnificent Parco Naturale Migliarino San Rossore Massaciuccoli, one of the largest and most ancient nature parks in Tuscany.

Landscapes

Close to the lovely city of Pisa which is considered one of the pearls of Italy with its world-famous Leaning Tower in the Piazza dei Miracoli, the park extends over 23,000 hectares and boasts a huge variety of landscapes.

Its meadows, hills, pine forests and marshes are bordered by the Tyrrhenian Sea providing a gentle sea breeze. And within the park lies the San Rossore Estate, home to San Rossore Racecourse, the historical home of Italian racing, as well as Villa del Gombo, a presidential home built after World War II. This venue has hosted a number of major FEI Endurance events including the 2019 World Championships for Junior & Young Riders, the World Championship for Young Horses and in 2018 the European Championship for Juniors & Young Riders.

The 2021 Longines FEI Endurance World Championships will get underway at the Racecourse at 07.00 on 22 May when a total of 81 competitors and their horses will set out on the 160 kilometre course. The statistics show a gender balance of 56% men and 44% women on the start list.

All health protocols will be in place as the Show Organisers, who have successfully created the event in a very short period of time, send out a great sporting message. 

Preparation  

“While preparation of the field of play and the course proceeds incessantly, not only San Rossore but also the city of Pisa and Tuscany seem to have come back to life. In spite of the problems caused by the pandemic we are ready to safely welcome the delegations from all over the world, well aware of the fact that this great event will have an important economic effect on the tourism and hospitality sector…..”, says Gianluca Laliscia, the former Endurance champion who heads the Organising Committee company sistemaeventi.it. 

Recently appointed FEI Endurance Director, Christina Abu-Dayyeh, says, “while it was an enormous disappointment having to postpone the 2020 edition of the Longines FEI Endurance World Championships due to the ongoing impact of Covid-19, this has only increased our passion to make these Championships even more spectacular in 2021!”

The event will be preceded by a spectacular Opening Ceremony on Thursday, 20 May, in the aptly-named Piazza dei Cavalieri beside Pisa’s famous university, the Scuola Normale Superiore. 

The Longines FEI Endurance World Championships 2021 will be broadcast live on FEI TV so fans and followers can watch the action unfold from all around the globe.

The line-up for the Longines FEI Endurance World Championship in Pisa, Italy has been confirmed, with competitors from 32 countries and five continents ready to challenge for the 2021 individual and team world titles on Saturday May 22.

Amongst them are the 2016 World Champion, Spain’s Jaume Punti Dachs, and his wife Maria Alvarez Ponton who has taken individual gold twice during her successful career - first at Terengganu in Malaysia in 2008 and again in Kentucky, USA in 2010. Also vying for top spot this time out will be Alex Luque Moral from Spain and Bahrain’s Sheikh Nasser Bin Hamad Al Khalifa who respectively took silver and bronze at the 2016 World Championships in Samorin, Slovakia. A total of 13 nations will be chasing down the team title.

Magnificent

The event will be staged in the magnificent Parco Naturale Migliarino San Rossore Massaciuccoli, one of the largest and most ancient nature parks in Tuscany. Close to the lovely city of Pisa which is considered one of the pearls of Italy with its world-famous Leaning Tower in the Piazza dei Miracoli, the park extends over 23,000 hectares and boasts a huge variety of landscapes.

Its meadows, hills, pine forests and marshes are bordered by the Tyrrhenian Sea providing a gentle sea breeze. And within the park lies the San Rossore Estate, home to San Rossore Racecourse, the historical home of Italian racing, as well as Villa del Gombo, a presidential home built after World War II. This location has hosted a number of major FEI Endurance events including the 2019 World Championships for Juniors & Young Riders, the World Championship for Young Horses and in 2018 the European Championship for Juniors & Young Riders.

The 2021 Longines FEI Endurance World Championships will get underway at the Racecourse at 07.00 on 22 May when a total of 81 competitors and their horses will set out on the 160 kilometre course. The statistics show a gender balance of 56% men and 44% women on the start list.

All health protocols will be in place as the Show Organisers, who have successfully created the event in a very short period of time, send out a great sporting message. 

Preparation  

“While preparation of the field of play and the course proceeds incessantly, not only San Rossore but also the city of Pisa and Tuscany seem to have come back to life. In spite of the problems caused by the pandemic we are ready to safely welcome the delegations from all over the world, well aware of the fact that this great event will have an important economic effect on the tourism and hospitality sector…..”, says Gianluca Laliscia, the former Endurance champion who heads the Organising Committee company sistemaeventi.it. 

Recently appointed FEI Endurance Director, Christina Abu-Dayyeh, says, “while it was an enormous disappointment having to postpone the 2020 edition of the Longines FEI Endurance World Championships due to the ongoing impact of Covid-19, this has only increased our passion to make these Championships even more spectacular in 2021!”

The event will be preceded by a spectacular Opening Ceremony on Thursday, 20 May, in the aptly-named Piazza dei Cavalieri beside Pisa’s famous university, the Scuola Normale Superiore. 

The Longines FEI Endurance World Championships 2021 will be broadcast live on FEI TV. so fans and followers can watch the action unfold from all around the globe.

Website www.ewc2021.com

Masterlist here 

What do you get when you combine an aviation engineer, a successful amateur rider and a galloping event horse? The answer, it seems, is the man who has made a massive contribution to the work of the FEI Eventing Risk Management Committee, and his name is David Vos.

He describes himself as “an airplane nut” who was fascinated from childhood by aviation dynamics and controls. He only started riding when he was 40 years old, but he has competed up to 2-Star International level in Eventing and his contribution to the creation of an updated standard for frangible devices for cross-country fences (https://inside.fei.org/fei/disc/eventing/risk-management/devices) has been pivotal. 

He’s passionate about improving safety. “We have to use all the tools at our disposal, including the people with a world of experience who have been in this sport for a very long time. You can never keep everyone perfectly safe, but we can do what’s necessary to make things as safe as possible if we take a responsible and disciplined approach”, he says.

As an athlete who came so late to the game, his integration into the Eventing Risk Management Steering Group took some time. “When you enter a new community no-one is going to listen to you”, he points out. It was through friends of his wife, journalist and entrepeneur Patricia Vos, that he was introduced to USEA Cross-Country Safety Committee Chair Jonathan Holling and it kicked off from there.

First versions

“I took videos of 2* and 3* horses running at Fairhill and began monitoring what the trajectory looked like and how the horses jumped. I saw the first versions of frangible fences when I started eventing myself and I just knew from an engineering perspective that it could be so much better. I’m super-interested in this from a physics and systems point of view. 

“It evolved pretty quickly because that’s my specialisation area. I was surprised how little of that existed in the dialogue which was much more driven by trial and error and experience, but very little by theoretical physics - the dynamics of systems.”

Talking with someone who knows how to use mathematical modelling to explain and predict natural phenonema could be a bit like swimming through soup for some of us. But David balances the conversation with stories of his groundbreaking inventions, his love of nature and his pioneering work through the Vos Foundation which aims to ensure the diversity of life by planting billions of trees. And he talks about his horses too of course.

It’s not just his intellectual energy that shines through, it’s also his altruism and humanity.

Free spirit

Born near Capetown in South Africa in 1961 he has always been something of a free spirit, hitch-hiking around the beautiful countryside from the age of 11. “When I was growing up my two big loves were nature and aviation. Animals have always been very special to me, and today it really hurts to know that when I was a kid there were half a million lions in sub-Saharan Africa but today there’s maybe 30,000 or some tiny number like that”, David says. 

His parents and his sister remain in South Africa while his brother moved to London in 1987. “We grew up in the apartheid era and hated our Government. I discovered very early on that good ademic credentials would be my ticket out of the country - basically the world hated us all so it was pretty hard to find a home”, he explains.

He seemed destined for a life in the aviation business. “There’s something magical about flight - my father was always into it and his brothers were pilots who flew in the Korean war.” Instead of becoming a pilot himself however he set his sights on a place at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Boston, USA and, at the age of 26, his wish came true. He made a big impact when, as part of his PhD project, he developed a unicycle robot in a laboratory that was also home to Marc Raibert and Robert Playter who went on to found the world-famous robotics company Boston Dynamics. It was the first step on the road to an extraordinary career.

Contracts

He started small, working out of his own basement for several years before forming a company that went on to win contracts all around the world. “The unmanned aviation market was just beginning in the late 90s so it was perfect timing”, he says. In one of many research projects, he blew off 80% of a wing and tail of an airplane in flight and demonstrated how the automation system would just keep adjusting the aircraft so it could land successfully. It was ground-breaking stuff in the early days of drone technology, and by 2008 his company, Athena Technologies, was a hot property that was eventually bought by avionics and IT giant Rockwell Collins. 

“I worked for them for four years as part of the contract and then left in 2012 and tried to hide away because I wanted to spend more time on our lovely 200-acre farm in Virginia where I had always felt I was just visiting. I wanted to immerse myself in the countryside and the animals, and to spend real time with my wife. I managed to do that for two years, but then Google found me through Patricia’s horse business and I ended up incubating their business on drone delivery service for two years”, he says. It was a real hit. “We delivered 1,000 burritos by drone and they wanted me to take it further, but that’s when I decided I was retiring for real!”

Horses

It was in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 that David was first introduced to the sport of Eventing, and he was immediately hooked. He and Patricia were living in Cape Cod at the time, and on that infamous 9/11 morning boarded the third of the 8am flights out of Boston. The first two were hijacked.

“It was a bizarre day and I ended up stuck in DC for several months because the aviation world shut down and we were busy with my business there. Patricia came to visit me after being stuck in Europe, and she dragged me out of my office to go to this thing called a Horse Trials in Fairhill and I immediately decided I wanted to do it. In six months we packed up our Cape Cod property and bought our farm in Virginia”.

The first thing Patricia, who has spent many years re-training off-the-track racehorses, put in place was David’s trainer, American rider Jennifer Simmons. “It was a synergistic partnership because we used to sponsor her and bought her a bunch of upper-level horses over the years. She was a great coach for me”. But he admits he hadn’t the first idea what he was letting himself in for.

“When I started I thought you take one lesson, buy a horse and off you go. I had no idea it was a lifelong process of always learning, and and going through all the ups and downs with different horses and how easily they get injured. Maybe if I knew that ahead of time I mightn’t have started!”, he says with a laugh. 

First horse

His first horse was lame within six months but lived out a long and happy life on the farm until passing away last year at the age of 27. “After that I bought any old horse as long as it was sound!”, David laughs again. A wild Trakehener/TB mare was followed by off-the-track Thoroughbreds, but it was a telephone call from US rider Will Coleman that introduced him to his most successful horse to date.

“Will said he’d seen a great Irish Sport Horse in someone’s back yard in England and that I should come and try it. So we combined a visit to Burghley in 2012 with going to see the horse along with Jennifer Simmons and Chris Hunnable”. It wasn’t love at first sight “he was more bulky that I had in mind”, but once David sat on him “I took a deep breath, and that was it”. The pair of them went from strength to strength despite some drama along the way.

“His name is Pablo (Spring Centurion) and he took me from Training all the way to the old 2* (now 3*) level. He was eight when I got him so he’s now 17 and I’m hoping to have him back in work again soon”. Pablo has twice ripped off part of a hoof - once out in the field and then in his stable - and he’s still recovering from that second incident. “But I’m a person that never gives up, so I’m still hoping he’ll come back!”.

On a business-trip to Ireland in 2016 he bought another horse, Apollo, as a four-year-old. “His mother is Irish and his father is German and he’s a super-nice guy!”, David says. He started working with Apollo after retiring for the second and last time in 2017. “I always wanted to train a young horse. It’s been a bit like the blind leading the blind but a whole lot of fun! 

“One of the really great things about the horse world is the relationship we have with our horses. They are really cool characters, and they give us very good life lessons in how to be zen about things we can’t control!”

Segues

Asked how his aviation systems expertise segues into advising on Risk Management in the sport he loves so much - especially since animals are not machines and therefore must be less predictable - David says “that’s the interesting part! You’d be surprised when a horse jumps how the physics really dominates. There’s a cross-domain convergence of really high-tech physiology, psychology and human-animal relationships and it’s really cool!

“At Burghley in 2019 for example I worked together with British Eventing and the FEI and we had up to 25 cameras around the course and I could show how the physics and the video aligned with each other within 5% of accuracy. It gave us confidence in the methodology and in simple tests such as putting a kettle bell on a chain and swinging it at a frangible fence. Depending on the release heights you can very accurately determine the energy of the impact”. 

Then we segue into talking about David and Patricia’s work in the Vos Foundation and the Trillion Trees project. “Right now our main drive is to significantly increase the publicity about tree-planting. We launched together with the Eden Project back in 2018 in Mozambique and so far around 20 millions trees have been planted and are growing and we are working with them and others to scale up the message.

“When you think about it, tree planting is the only known solution to mankind today to resolve our carbon dioxide problem. And all we have to do is plant one more tree for every three out there on the planet today. If we do that by 2030 we will buy probably as many decades as we need to bring online all the sustainable energy solutions the world needs to be able to have humans easily survive on the planet without driving carbon dioxide and global warming nuts!

“It’s incredibly exciting doing this simple thing - pushing seeds into the ground and letting nature grow them. All we have to do is help nature here and we can resolve this monstrous problem that we, as humans, have created.”

Similarities

Back talking horses, David says there are strong similarities between people in the equestrian world and his academic and business colleagues. “There are always people who are really brave, people who are really scared and people who are really smart, and I believe that being clever about things is about being a fearless thinker more than anything else. 

“To reach the top of anything you need fortitude and commitment along with solid doses of humility. There are awesome people everywhere and I’m a really big believer that most people are good people and want to do the right thing. The Eventing Risk Management Group is full of people like that.”

Defending champions Werth and Weihegold have to settle for second as Germans scoop top four placings

It has been a long wait since the first leg was staged last October, but the resumption of the 2020/2021 FEI Dressage World Cup™ Western European League didn’t disappoint when Germany’s Jessica von Bredow-Werndl and TSF Dalera BB swept to victory in Salzburg, Austria today.

In a cracker of a competition, the pair who helped claimed team gold at the 2018 FEI World Equestrian Games™ threw down a superb performance when second-last to go in the field of 13. And their score of 87.960 ousted the partnership that have claimed the coveted FEI Dressage World Cup™ title on the last three occasions, Isabell Werth and Weihegold OLD who had to settle for runner-up spot on their mark of 84.720. 

Reminding the world that German dressage is in great shape, Helen Langehanenberg slotted into third with Annabelle when putting 81.340 on the board while Dorothee Schneider filled fourth place with Faustus when posting 80.650. Only one other horse-and-rider combination managed to break the 80 percent barrier, Swedish star Patrick Kittel steering Delaunay OLD into fifth on a mark of 80.125.

Halfway stage

It was another Swedish pair who held the lead at the halfway stage, Antonia Ramel and Brother de Jeu who were on the bronze medal winning side along with Kittel and Well Done de la Roche at the 2019 FEI European Championships in Rotterdam (NED). 

Ramel produced a lovely test from the 15-year-old gelding to score 77.460 today but, third to go after the break, Werth moved things on to a completely different level when scoring more than seven percent higher. And when both compatriot Langehanenberg and then Kittel couldn’t get close to bettering that, it seemed the writing was already on the wall. 

But von Bredow-Werndl had other ideas.

“I was really ready for it today because Dalera already felt amazing yesterday”, she pointed out. In Saturday’s Grand Prix she finished second to Werth, but that didn’t blunt her ambitions. 

“I came in today with the hope to win! We had a very stupid mistake yesterday when she fell into trot before the one-tempis because she thought it was already the last line for the extended trot, and that was more than expensive because the one-tempis count double. Today I knew if we got things right then we had a really good chance!”

And they got it absolutely right, the 34-year-old rider and her 14-year-old mare nailing it with a superb test that secured pole position by more than three percentage points over Werth who may not have been all that surprised, as she clearly wasn’t happy with her own performance, shaking her head as she left the arena. 

Today’s winning partnership had already beaten Werth and Weihegold twice before - at the FEI Dressage World Cup™ qualifier in Stuttgart (GER) in 2019 and at last year’s German Championships. Werth knew perfectly well that she needed a mistake-free test to keep the pressure on her fellow-countrywoman who is always a strong challenger, so when she didn’t get that she was always going to be vulnerable.

Season

Instead of a full season of qualifiers, the Western European League has been severely curtailed by the effects of the pandemic, and today’s leg at Salzburg was only the second in the lead-up to the 2021 Final which is scheduled for Gothenburg (SWE) from 31 March to 4 April. In this virus-ridden era it is difficult to predict anything anymore, but another qualifier is planned for ’s-Hertogenbosch (NED) in March and under the revised qualifying criteria the best two results from the Western European and Central European Leagues will count towards qualification.

Today’s result leaves von Bredow-Werndl at the top of the qualification table with Langehanenberg in second, Kittel in third, Morgan Barbancon from France in fourth and The Netherlands’ Thamar Zweistra and Ireland’s Anna Merveldt sharing fifth place.  Austria’s Christian Schumach lies seventh while Denmark’s Carina Cassoe Kruth, who collected eight points when finishing tenth today with Heiline’s Danciera, is in eighth place. A total of nine athletes will make the cut to the Final and Denmark’s Cathrine Dufour, who won the opening on home ground at Aarhus last October, at this stage shares that ninth spot with Germany’s Benjamin Werndl.

Environment

As von Bredow-Werndl pointed out today it’s not an easy environment for either horses or riders these days.

“Dalera was a bit nervous yesterday but I have to admit I was too! I realise now that it is too long for me to have a competition break for over three months - I really need to compete and so do the horses. Riding the test at home and going to a competition are two completely different things. You need to measure yourself against the other competitors, and it’s a more honest way to look in the mirror if you do it at a competition”, she said.

She complimented Show Director Josef Goellner and his team for staging the Austrian event in such a difficult times. The show is taking place without spectators and with rigorous restrictions. “I’m so grateful that the organisers managed to do such a great job and that it was perfectly organised. Everyone feels safe here, everyone is wearing a mask and there is hand sanitiser everywhere - it’s strange, but I’m so glad to be here!”, she said.

She would like to compete in ’s-Hertogenbosch, but brotherly love may get in the way of that. “I want my brother (Benjamin Werndl) to have a chance to go there because he already won one qualifier (at Zakrzow, Poland in October) and he needs to go to another one, and there are usually only four Germans allowed to ride”, she explained. 

When it comes to the Final in Gothenburg however, nothing will hold her back. “Oh yes, I’ll be going there for sure - and with all guns blazing!”, she said.

Result here 

Standings here 

German big guns out in force

Reigning five-time series champion and World No. 1, Germany’s Isabell Werth, heads the sparkling start-list for the FEI Dressage World Cup™ qualifier in Salzburg, Austria this weekend.

She will partner Weihegold OLD, the 16-year-old mare with which she claimed the prestigious title at the last three Finals, in Omaha (USA) in 2017, Paris (FRA) in 2017 and Gothenburg (SWE) in 2019. 

And the German challenge will be mighty one, as Werth is joined by compatriots Jessica von Bredow-Werndl who holds the World No. 3 spot and Olympians Dorothee Schneider and Helen Langehanenberg. 

Only one other leg of the 2020/2021 Western European League qualifying series has taken place so far, at Aarhus in Denmark in October where the host nation’s Cathrine Dufour and Bohemian came out on top. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has played havoc with the sporting calendar worldwide for almost a year now, but there is great excitement about the resumption of the prestigious FEI Dressage World Cup™ series that is now in its 36th season - the 35th cut short by effect of the virus.

10 nations

A total of 14 athletes from 10 nations will compete this weekend including Swedish showman Patrick Kittel with Delaunay OLD, the 15-year-old gelding with which he finished sixth at the 2018/2019 Final on home ground in Gothenburg. And also flying the Swedish flag will be Antonia Ramel and Brother de Jeu who, alongside Kittel and Well Done de la Roche, helped claimed team bronze at the 2019 FEI European Dressage Championships in Rotterdam (NED). 

Anna Merveldt and her 12-year-old Lusitano gelding Esporim went into the history books when helping Ireland to Olympic qualification in Dressage for the very first time at those Rotterdam Championships, and they come to Salzburg with some strong results. They were runners-up behind the French duo of Morgan Barbançon and the 15-year-old stallion Sir Donnerhall ll OLD in the Freestyle at Budapest-Fót (HUN) in October where the French pair, who will be back in the ring this weekend, also dominated the Grand Prix.

Germany’s von Bredow-Werndl brings the horse with which she holds the No. 3 spot in the World Rankings, the 14-year-old Trakehner mare TSF Dalera BB. Schneider will partner the 13-year-old gelding Faustus who won the CDI4* Grand Prix Special at Oldenburg (GER) in November and Langehanenberg will ride the 13-year-old mare Annabelle which won the CDI3* Grand Prix Special at Aarhus last October.   

Represented

The Netherlands will be represented by Thamar Zweistra and the 13-year-old stallion Hexagon’s Double Dutch who finished third in the Grand Prix and Freestyle at the CDI-W fixtures in both Mariakalnok (HUN) last June and at Pilisjászfalu (HUN) in August 2020. 

Italy’s Francesco Zaza (Wispering Romance), Denmark’s Carina Cassoe Kruth (Heiline’s Danciera), Belgium’s Simon Missiaen (Charlie), Australia’s Simone Pearce (Destano) and Austria’s Franziska Fries (Atomic) are also in the mix. So it is going to be a truly international cast that takes centre-stage at the Messezentrum Arena in the city so closely associated with both revered composer, Mozart, and the much-loved 1965 film “The Sound of Music”.

The FEI World Cup™ Dressage Grand Prix is scheduled for 08.00 local time on Saturday 23 January, while the FEI Dressage World Cup™ Freestyle will take place on Sunday 24 January starting at 11.00. 

He’s a horseman, a sports fan, a legal expert and successful businessman, and as 2021 dawns Israel’s Ken Lalo is filled with anticipation. Because, for the very first time, his country will be represented by a Jumping team at the Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer, and his role in making that happen has been a major one.

“It was a dream of mine for many years”, says the man who has served as President of his National Federation for six terms. “It started partially as my own project because the Board didn’t support me at the time. They felt we should concentrate on establishing more events in Israel and on developing a bigger pool of riders. But I was of the belief that we had to do both”, he points out.

Appointment

I’m interviewing him in late December 2020, after his appointment as Chair of the FEI Atypical Findings Panel which was created prior to implementation of the new FEI Equine Anti-Doping and Controlled Medication Regulations on 1 January 2021.

Ken Lalo’s involvement with the FEI and its legal work dates back to the 1990s. He was Deputy Chair of the FEI Judicial Committee from 1996 to 1999, Chair from 1999, and when that morphed into the FEI Tribunal he continued in the Chair until 2011 when he was appointed as an Arbitrator at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), a role he continues to fill.

The two words that arise most often in conversation with him are “reasonable” and “fair”, and they possibly explain the status of the reputation he has established. Ken has been at the sharp end of many major legal wrangles down the years, so one might expect to be confronted by a tough, opinionated and uncompromising individual. In stark contrast however he is soft-spoken, thoughtful and sympathetic. It is patently obvious that he has the best interests of both athletes and sport at heart.

An Atypical Findings Policy means that it will be possible for the FEI to determine that the presence of some substances will no longer lead to automatic penalties. “Certain substances which can appear in a human athlete as a result of contamination shouldn’t automatically lead in all instances to a legal case, and the FEI expanded this to medications or substances used in horses which I think makes a lot of sense”, he explains. 

Contaminated horse feed

He refers to an incident some years ago when the FEI Tribunal was faced with five positive cases from a single event which were eventually all traced to contaminated horse feed. “It was a mistake on the part of a well-known manufacturer, but we still had to find against the riders and I’m not sure that this was a fair result”, he says.

“Sometimes you create a system and then, as a reaction to outside events, you go too much in one direction or another. When I first joined the Tribunal under Lord Lowry we didn’t treat medication or prohibited substance cases with horses the same as for humans….but then we matched the rules with strict liability and harsher sanctions. In a strict liability system a person is found liable regardless of whether they meant it or not. With laboratories now able to find minuscule amounts of substances it sometimes can go to the extreme and be too harsh”, he says.

In his role with WADA, the decongestant and bronchodilator Clenbuterol has been a major cause for concern. It is widely used by asthma sufferers but, as Ken points out “in some countries like Mexico and China you find it in meat…and it is unfair to penalise an athlete if they test positive for something they couldn’t control under any reasonable circumstances even after applying the strictest measures”.

Lifelong passion

He’s had a lifelong passion for horses even though, as he says, “Israel is a country with no horse tradition to speak of. We had Arabian horses and pleasure riding but not much more. During the British mandate from 1920 to 1948 there were some Jumping events for British solders but at a very low level. 

“But for some reason I loved horses from an early age and I used to go to the stables every day instead of school, so when I was 15 my father suggested I go and ride in England and leave High School even though he was a graduate of Harvard”. It was a wise decision, because Ken would eventually take a similar route without being denied his opportunity to enjoy equestrian sport. And that has led him to where he is today.

From the age of 15 to 18 he trained with British Olympic Dressage coach, Robert Hall, at the famous Fulmer School of Equitation in England and became a British Horse Society Instructor. And after his mandatory national army service he joined Robert at his American base in Massachusetts and rode on the US East Coast Dressage circuit, competing up to international level. By the time he was 20 he had completed his A levels and had law school in his sights, eventually emerging with a Masters and MBA.

But he never stopped riding, jumping up to 1.35m level in Israel. He met his wife, Allison, when he gave her a riding lesson, and his children - two boys and a girl - all rode. “The boys were Israeli champions many times in showjumping”, he says proudly. “Dean now lives and works as an architect in New York, Leiel is in his last year of medical studies in Hungary and Romy studies communications at an Israeli University - and we still have horses and I still ride on occasion”. 

In his “proper job” he has worked for a very large Israeli high-tech conglomerate and, more recently, manages a company in the automotive business in Europe. “We operate in 10 countries with sales that came from zero to half a billion Euros. I hope to grow it to one billion in a year or two”, he says casually. Somehow he has managed to fit the commitment to the FEI and CAS into all that.

Involved

He first became involved with the FEI in 1992. “Israeli equestrian at the time was isolated because we are in the Middle East and most of our other sports were connected with Europe. So I had to persuade the FEI to allow us to become part of Europe” he points out. Of course he succeeded and in 1996 he became a member of the Judicial Committee, Deputy Chairman and eventually Chairman, and then headed the Tribunal when it was formed. “As the FEI became more professional with a legal team in-house then there was separation which I was very much in favour of - it made sense to become a Tribunal with proper processes to decide cases and to allow the FEI legal staff to draft the regulations and prosecute legal cases”, he says.

In his role with CAS he doesn’t deal with equestrian sport “because I’m considered to be too close to the equestrian world”. Instead he is mainly involved with cases in athletics, hockey and football, and mostly around doping-related issues.

“A year ago CAS created an Anti-Doping Division specifically for doping cases, and that was always my strength and preference so I’m part of that”, he points out. In that capacity he was a member of the CAS Anti-Doping Commission at the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

Seriously

He takes his work very seriously. “It’s very challenging but in the end I try to apply the rules correctly to the facts and ignore outside noise so to speak, anything not relevant, and take a decision. You have to also understand that a decision must be fair to the entire sport system. Not that you decide just one case, there are other athletes that competed at that event, or other events, and what you decide can affect them too. 

“So in a sense you defend the entire reason that people compete, and that fans go to see sport. They expect the event to be operated under a proper legal system and that the rules are observed, otherwise they will know there’s monkey business going on in their sport and eventually they won’t be interested in it anymore, so the sport loses all its value”. 

Legal cases can be notoriously difficult to untangle, but Ken says he’s always in favour of trying to simplify things, and that speed is of the essence.

“It is of key importance to try to stay in an acceptable timeline. For a legal system to be proper you have to make quick decisions. That’s not always the case I know, which is unfortunate, but it should be the idea. When I was at the Tribunal one of the key ideas I introduced was a specific set of recommended timelines for cases, and I also announced at every General Assembly how many cases were decided within those timelines and how many were outside. So that was a way to judge myself as well. I think this is really important”.

Plain sailing

His role as President of the Israeli Equestrian Federation hasn’t been all plain sailing. Initially he met with significant opposition, “because many of the people who control the sport here are horse dealing and trading and sometimes they have a very narrow perception, even fearing that high-level athletes may take away some of their customers”. So that leads to friction.

“I’ve only one interest - to see the Israeli team being successful internationally. I think every sports organisation should try to get to the top, and for me that’s the Olympic Games!”.

‘At the same time you don’t forget that you need a broad base of the sport in the country to develop future generations of riders, and I’m doing that too. We have quite a strong number of riders at the moment and many of them are young and talented. In Jumping we have four in the top 200 of U25, and even Daniel Bluman is still young!” he adds.

And his top team are also supported by two legends, Hans Hoorn and Olympic, World and European champion Jeroen Dubbeldam who combine the jobs of Chef d’Equipe and trainer. “We looked for people with experience who would hopefully attract a big group of our international riders. I wanted to maximise the support of the riders and their personal trainers and to avoid conflict when it comes to team selection. I’ve learned from my professional career that to keep a good team you need stability, stamina and patience, and I try to apply those principles. So my real role is to keep the Federation stable and as silent as possible on the issue of team selection so we can have a better longterm view of what we are setting out to achieve”. 

Mission

“Our mission is three Olympics until 2028 - Tokyo, Paris and Los Angeles. I know you need mileage to be successful and you can’t get that in a short period of time, but this is something we are trying to build.

“Tokyo will be our first Olympics and I hope we can also qualify for Paris and it becomes more of a tradition for us to be at the Games. On paper we are not amongst the top 10 teams, but on a good day I hope we can somehow have a successful day or a successful individual rider and then we take it as it goes. There is no pressure. I advise the sponsors and the riders that it’s important to build tradition and culture and mutual support as much as possible. It’s not easy when you have individual athletes, and that’s why I’d also like see Hans and Jeroen staying with us for the longterm”.

It hasn’t been easy for Ken Lalo to put a financial support system in place either, but that situation is improving. Before Olympic qualification was achieved in July 2019 the Israeli Equestrian Federation wouldn’t release funding, and everyone involved had to pay their own way. Now however that has changed, and at last there is a sense of moving forward together with big goals ahead, although his position as President is voluntary so he continues to self-finance - “and I think that’s the healthiest system”, he says. 

Travel

In his role as Federation President, he will travel to Tokyo with the team, and his wife Allison will be there too. She likes joining him at events but, unlike her husband, doesn’t ride anymore.

“But we still have a big interest across the whole family. It’s a must because if you have to get up at five in the morning to take the trailer to a horse show and you only get back at night or the next day, then unless the whole family is involved I don’t know how you can continue doing it for years. But that’s my biggest fun, it always keeps the right balance”.

The pandemic has taken its toll in Israel like everywhere else but with around 10% of the population already vaccinated it is hoped the country will be Covid-free by April and, thanks to determined negotiations with government, horse events continued to be staged. “We actually had greater participation at shows in 2020 than in 2019!”. 

His biggest disappointment of the year was the cancellation of the London International Horse Show last month. “Christmas without Olympia was very sad. We go there every year, and night after night we sit through the entire performance, including the dog agility, and love every minute of it - it’s an amazing show!”

But he’s really looking forward to what 2021 has to offer. “I’m generally optimistic and I love everything to do with horse sport and sport generally”, says this man of integrity who has long been a custodian of fair play in the field of sporting ambition…..