A fabulous Freestyle finale brought the third and last week of the FEI Dressage European Youth Championships 2020 drew to a close at Pilisjàszfalu in Hungary today, with Germany’s Lucie-Anouk Baumgürtel the runaway star of the Pony Championships having bagged three gold medals. 

Teams

A total of 51 combinations started in the Pony Team test in which Baumgürtel was joined by Antonia Roth, Shona Benner and Rose Oatley to take the title. A final scoreline of 232.771 gave them more than a 10-point advantage over the silver medallists from Denmark who pinned The Netherlands into bronze by less than a single percentage point.

From a field of 11 nations, Belgium finished fourth ahead of Austria, Poland, Ireland, Finland, France, Czech Republic and Italy in that order.

A great pathfinding score of 75.971 was posted by 14-year-old Roth partnering the nine-year-old stallion Daily Pleasure WE. And when 16-year-old Benner and Der Kleine Sunnyboy WE, Team and Freestyle bronze medallists at the 2019 championships in Strzegom (POL), put 75.886 on the board then Germany was already out in front on Wednesday with two riders still to go.

Youngest team member 13-year-old Oatley and her 10-year-old palomino pony Daddy Moon then raised the bar on Thursday morning when scoring 76.743. So when 16-year-old Baumgürtel posted a massive 80.057 then German gold was safely secured.

After the first day The Netherlands lay in silver medal spot ahead of Belgium in bronze, but the fourth-placed Danes eventually overtook the Dutch which pushed the Belgians off the medal podium. Scores of 76.743 and 75.228 from Sophia Boje Obel Jørgensen (Adriano B) and Liva Addy Guldager Nielsen (D’Artagnan) really lifted the Danish effort, while the pure consistency of the Dutch side, and a smart mark of 75.314 from anchor Lara van Nek (Baumann’s Despino NRW), bagged the bronze. 

Individual

It was a German one-two-three after Friday’s first stage of the Individual competition, with Baumgürtel once again leading the pack after posting a spectacular new record score. Great Britain’s Phoebe Peters set the previous European Pony Individual record at 81.39 at Malmo (SWE) in 2015 where she won triple gold, but Baumgürtel blew that out of the water when awarded 82.351.

And then she had to sit back and wait to see if anyone else could improve on that. In the end her victory was clear-cut, as none of her rivals earned over 80 percent.  

When the Individual competition resumed yesterday her compatriots, Roth and Oatley, were holding silver and bronze, the former posting 77.297 and the latter, daughter of Australian Olympian Kristy Oatley, putting 76.649 on the board for a test filled with glorious trot extensions but hampered by mistakes towards the end.

In the team event Oatley’s score had been matched by silver medallist Sophia Boje Obel Jørgensen from Denmark. And when the Dane and the charming gelding Adriano B, gold medallist for Alexander Yde Helgstrand last summer, produced a lovely performance yesterday their mark of 79.000 ensured it wouldn’t be an all-German podium as they slotted in behind Baumgürtel and pushed Oatley off the podium. 

Haul

Baumgürtel’s haul of European medals already included Team and Freestyle gold at Vilhelmsborg (DEN) in 2016, Team bronze and Freestyle gold at Kaposvar (HUN) in 2017 and Team gold at Bishops Burton (GBR) in 2018. She intended competing at the Junior Europeans last summer but it didn’t happen when her horse was injured. So she decided to return to Ponies in her final year of eligibility, and she has enjoyed every moment of it. 

“Nasdaq is the pony of a lifetime, he gave me an amazing feeling and I’m so happy!” she said after accepting the Individual gold medal. “We bought him as a four-year-old stallion so he’s with us for five years and it has been lovely to see him develop”, she added.

Last year her sister, Lana-Pinou, took over the ride on the pony that brought her all her previous successes, Zinq Massimiliano, so Lucie-Anouk didn’t have high expectations this time around. “I can’t believe it, it’s amazing because I have only been riding Nasdaq since September of last year and he has come so far! When we made it to the Europeans I didn’t expect anything to be honest, I just wanted to enjoy a great pony time and I’m so thankful to have had the opportunity to ride here in this lovely place!”, said the rider who hails from Munster region of Germany.  

Freestyle

In today’s Freestyle finale she proved untouchable again. The standard of competition was breathtaking, and when Oatley and Daddy Moon set the target at 81.400 with just four more to follow, that really piled on the pressure. Her super-cute Daddy Moon was elastic, responsive, expressive and on the button all the way, and his diminutive rider didn’t hide her delight after riding into her final halt.

But, to the strain of Queen’s “Its a kind of magic”, Baumgürtel followed with another extraordinary performance from Zinq Nasdaq that saw judges Orsolya Hillier (HUN), Eduard De Wolff Van Westerrode (NED), Ulrike Nivelle (GER), Paula Nysten (FIN) and Eva-Maria Vint-Warmington (EST) award 85.735, just fractionally short of the Freestyle world record for ponies set by Phoebe Peters at those 2015 championships. 

Denmark’s Liva Addy Guldager Nielsen and D’Artagnan put 78.390 on the board when third-last to go and then her team-mate Sophia Boje Obel Jørgensen threw down a great challenge with a relaxed, harmonious test for 82.555 that moved her into silver medal spot. The question now was whether the final rider, Antonia Roth, could push fellow-German Oatley off the podium once again, but a break in counter-canter proved costly with Roth’s score of 79.710 leaving her in fourth place this time around and the happy, smiling Oatley with the bronze medal around her neck.

Results here 

Fantastic performances from the next generation of Dressage superstars

Dutch take four of the six titles on offer

If the stunning Freestyle performances that brought week 2 of the FEI Dressage European Youth Championships 2020 to a close at Pilisjàszfalu in Hungary today are anything to go by, then the future of European Dressage is in very safe hands. Both the U25 and Young Riders athletes and their horses presented top sport and demonstrated an abundance of promise all week, with The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark sharing U25 gold but the Dutch completely dominating the top step of the Young Riders podium.

U25

There was a fairytale finish to the U25 Championship today when Denmark’s Anne-Mette Strandby Hansen steered Foco Loco W to Freestyle gold. The 15-year-old gelding made a dream come true for his owner, Dominican Republic’s Yvonne Losos de Muniz, when he carried her to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games where they finished 59th individually. And after sealing victory today, Strandby Hansen said, “I’m so lucky I got to ride this horse and it’s unbelievable what he did for me - he has a heart of gold!”. It was indeed an extraordinary achievement because this was the Danish rider’s championship debut, and she sparkled.

The pair helped Denmark to bronze medal position in Tuesday’s team finale in which The Netherlands claimed gold despite elimination for Mercedes Verweij. It was the top score of 74.765 produced by Jeanine Nieuwenhuis and TC Athene that clinched it for the Dutch when added to 72.882 from Jasmien de Koeyer and Esperanza and 71.647 from Febe van Swambagt and Edison. Germany claimed silver bolstered by the second-ranked score of the competition from Ann-Kathrin Lindner and FBW Sunfire who put 74.588 on the board.

Turned the tables

Lindner, U25 team gold medallist last summer, turned the tables when pipping Nieuwenhuis for the Individual title the following day while Germany’s Raphael Netz steered Lacoste 126 into bronze with a charming ride. Strandby Hansen missed out on a podium placing when lining up in fourth, but a stand-out performance today saw them awarded 79.025 by judges Paula Nysten (FIN), Peter Hansaghy (HUN), Henning Lehrmann (GER), Elisabeth Max-Theurer (AUT) and Annette Fransen Iacobaeus (SWE) for Freestyle gold. Nieuwenhuis claimed silver on 78.450 while Lindner slotted into bronze medal spot on 77.610.

Foco Loco W, whose stable-name is Dobby, simply smiled his way through today’s winning test, making every movement look as easy as can be. He listened to his rider from beginning to end, presenting lovely tempi changes, piaffe, passage and pirouettes and the only time he was the tiniest bit naughty was when he spooked when someone waved a Danish flag in celebration after he left the arena.

He remained at the Helgstrand Dressage stables in Denmark after Yvonne Losos de Muniz last competed him at the FEI Dressage World Cup™ qualifier in Herning (DEN) in October 2019. And in November Strandby Hansen, who has been working at Helgstrand for the last two years, got the ride on the horse who took individual silver for Losos de Muniz at the Central American & Caribbean Games in Veracruz, Mexico back in 2014.

Partnership

They’ve been building their partnership together ever since, but today’s Freestyle was a first for the Danish rider, and it’s one she will never forget. “I only got the floorplan last Monday and I rode it just once at home before coming here, I never competed in a Grand Prix Freestyle before!” the delighted rider said. 

Foco Loco is at Helgstrand “for training and sale”, and Strandby Hansen, who rides everything from three-year-old stallions to top-level horses, says he has a heart of gold and is a bit of a show-off. “He is so well behaved but still has the fire to do his work, and he loves it. When people started whistling at the end (of the test) he just lifted his legs higher and higher! And today it was so warm, over 30 degrees, but he still kept on fighting for me”, said the rider who is now looking forward to moving up to Senior level.

Young Riders

The Netherlands’ Young Rider team was also reduced to just three, this time due to  elimination for Thalia Rockx and Golden Dancer de la Fazenda. However, just like their U25 counterparts, the rest of the Riders in Orange didn’t let that stop their country from coming out on top thanks to solid performances from Quinty Vassers, Daphne van Peperstraten and Marten Luiten. 

Their score of 222.940 was good enough to edge Germany’s Henriette Schmidt (Rocky’s Sunshine), Luca Sophia Collin (Descolari and Lia Welschof (First Class 88) into silver on a score of 222.030, while 215.794 sealed the bronze for Denmark. And once they got the bit between their teeth the Dutch went on to make it a hat-trick of Young Rider gold when adding the Individual and Freestyle titles.

Judges Kurt Christensen (DEN), Maria Colliander (FIN), Evi Eisenhardt (GER), Eduard de Wolff van Westerrode (NED0 and Eva-Maria Vint-Warmington (EST) were in complete agreement when placing 18-year-old Luiten, a double-silver medallist at Junior level last year, at the top of the Individual scoreboard with the 10-year-old mare Fynona on a mark of 77.559. Germany’s Welschof took silver while Luiten’s team-mate, van Paperstraten, claimed the bronze with Greenpoints Cupido.

However van Peperstraten threw down an extraordinary test for a score of 80.69 when fourth-last to go in today’s Freestyle, and when Luiten was one of several to make mistakes in his tempi-changes he had to settle for bronze behind Welschof. 

Maturity

Van Paperstraten, gold medallist at the FEI Junior European Championships in Fontainebleau (FRA) in 2018 and at the FEI Young Riders European Championship at San Giovanni in Marignano (ITA) last summer, showed great maturity in her riding and was thrilled with the result.

“I was already so happy with how things went this week because the gold team medal was something I didn’t expect, and then yesterday I had a great feeling on Cupido and was super-happy with my test although it was a pity we had a mistake at the end. I was still very satisfied with my Individual bronze medal”, the 20-year-old rider explained. “So today I just wanted to enjoy my Freestyle. It was the first time to ride it in competition and I was excited to see how it would work out and fit with the music. When it all worked out I knew we had done a very good job and that’s the best feeling. I couldn’t be more happy!” 

She rode a daring centreline of three-tempi changes to her final halt. “I knew that had to be good because if you make a mistake it’s not possible to win a European medal”, she pointed out. “We did it because it’s something different, and Cupi is always amazing in the canterwork. You have to take the risk if you want to take a medal!”

The action now moves on to the FEI European Pony Dressage Championships 2020 which will take place from 28 to 30 August.

Results here 

 

Clean sweep of gold and plenty of drama

It wasn’t the biggest surprise when Team Germany dominated the first week of the FEI Dressage European Youth Championships 2020 which drew to a close at Pilisjàszfalu in Hungary today. But plenty of drama accompanied their clean sweep of gold in both the Junior and Children’s categories and, as this afternoon’s Junior Freestyle winner Valentina Pistner said, “it’s been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster!”

Juniors

Ups and down are the order of the day in equestrian sport, and although Pistner joined Allegra Schmitz-Morkramer (Lavissaro), Jana Lang (Baron 321) and Anna Middelberg (Blickfang HC) on the top step of the Junior Team podium on Tuesday, hers was the team discount score.  

Middelberg and her nine-year-old horse produced the highest individual mark, and the German total of 222.212 gave them a generous advantage over the Danes in silver on 214.818 while the bronze-medalled Dutch posted a final tally of 213.515. However the margin of German victory might have been even greater if Pistner, who finished 27th individually, hadn’t run into trouble.  

“Sadly my horse had his tongue over the bit. It happens sometimes and there is little you can do in that situation, but we tried fighting, we tried to finish our test so that we could give a fourth score for the team”, the 17-year-old rider explained. She pulled it right back on Wednesday however when lining up in silver medal spot behind Middelberg in the Individual Championship in which Lang made it a German whitewash when taking the bronze. 

One better

And then Pistner went one better when Flamboyant danced his way to the top of today’s Freestyle scoreboard. Middelberg, who took team gold at the FEI Dressage Pony European Championships in Kaposvar (HUN) in 2017 and the Juniors in Marignano (ITA) last year, threw down the gauntlet with a score of 78.480 when fifth-last to go, and that was always going to be tough to beat. Team-mate Lang challenged strongly when posting 77.040, but she had to settle for bronze when, last into the ring, Pistner nailed it with a mark of 79.285.

“It’s such an incredible feeling - this is my third European Championship and my ninth medal!”, said the rider who lives near Frankfurt (GER) and who describes the fabulous Flamboyant as “just the sweetest”.

She could have allowed Tuesday’s result to affect her for the rest of the week but she kept her head and carried on. “My motto is ‘just do it, stay calm and try your best because that’s all you can ever do!”, this wise young lady added.

Flamboyant was bought from German Dressage superstar Isabell Werth in December 2017, and the new partnership were already being scouted for the 2018 European Championships just a few weeks later. “We were able to win three silver medals that year and our journey has continued since then, but now it may be time for us to step up to another level”, the new champion revealed this evening. “I’m not sure yet, it hasn’t be fully decided, but I have been riding Juniors since I was 13 and it’s maybe time to move on and try to progress and improve.”  

Children

The Children’s team title went to Germany on Wednesday when the three-member side of Clara Paschertz (Danubio OLD), Emily Rother (Jasper 224) and Caroline Miesner (Angelina 331) pinned their Dutch counterparts into silver while France claimed bronze. It was a tight contest when the winning total of 245.468 left Germany just 0.2 ahead of their nearest rivals. The highest marks of the competition went to 14-year-old Rother who put 84.025 on the board, and she made it a golden double when topping this morning’s Individual Championship with 86.145.

This year a new judging system was introduced for the Children’s category, placing the focus on riding skills. So the Ground Jury members have different roles depending on where they sit around the arena, those on the short side overseeing the technical aspects of the test and those on the long side judging the ridden work. A “Quality” score is awarded with marks for position and seat, effectiveness of the aids, precision and general impression, and in this morning’s Individual Championship Rother racked up a massive 95.500 for Quality to secure a clear-cut victory with her nine-year-old gelding.

Courageous team-mate

Silver went to her courageous team-mate, 13-year-old Paschertz, who was last to go and put a strong 81.355 on the board. A member of the winning Children’s team at the Tokyo 2020 Test Event in Hagen (GER) in May of last year, Clara was taken to hospital for observation following a fall from Danubio during the team prizegiving ceremony on Wednesday. But today she showered her seven-year-old gelding with praise after their lovely performance pinned The Netherlands’ Maura Knipscheer, riding the 15-year-old gelding Amaretto, into bronze medal position. 

Rother, who hails from Bavaria in the south of Germany, was competing in pony classes until last year. “I have only had Jasper for the last six months and this is just our fifth show together. My parents got him from my riding teacher Sabina Schroedter, and he gives everything to me!”, she said. 

Asked what her ambitions were coming to Hungary for these championships, the newly-crowned FEI Dressage Children’s European champion replied, “I just wanted not to finish last!” She definitely succeeded in doing that…..

The FEI Dressage European Youth Championships 2020 continue next week when Young Riders and U25 athletes take centre stage from 17 to 21 August.

Results here 

 

 

The Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ Final 2020 in Barcelona (ESP) has been cancelled. The cancellation is a joint-decision taken by the International Equestrian Federation (FEI), Spanish National Federation (Real Federación Hípica Española) and the Foundation and Board of the Real Club de Polo de Barcelona (RCPB), longtime host of the FEI Nations Cup™ Final. The Barcelona Final was scheduled to be held from 2-4 October.

“We have looked at every scenario, including potentially running the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup Final behind closed doors without spectators, but the combination of the situation in Catalonia and the ongoing international travel restrictions has meant that we have unfortunately been forced to jointly agree that regrettably this year’s Final cannot go ahead in Barcelona, the risks are simply too great”, FEI President Ingmar De Vos said.

“When we announced changes to the rules for the Final back in April, we were cautiously optimistic that even if the series fell victim to the pandemic, we would be able to save the Final in Barcelona, but sadly that has proved impossible.

“Of course this is devastating news for everyone involved, not least the athletes that were hoping to compete at the Final, to our hosts in Barcelona and of course to our Top Partner Longines, but health and safety have to be our top priorities. While we are all very disappointed now, we very much look forward to returning to Barcelona for the Final in 2021.”

“This difficult decision is very disappointing for our Club and our members and everyone involved”, RCPB Foundation President Emilio Zegrí said. “The Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup Final is an annual highlight for us, the city of Barcelona and all the national and international spectators who fill the stands year after year, but it was important that we took this decision now, knowing that a last-minute cancellation would have meant significant costs for the National Federations having made travel plans for their athletes and horses. However, we want to transmit a positive message of hope. We will redouble our efforts so that the 2021 Final can be celebrated as an outstanding edition.”

The rule changes for the 2020 Final announced earlier this year when the pandemic first started to impact the FEI Calendar, meant that 22 nations would have been invited to compete at the Final in Barcelona (2-4 October): 10 from Europe, three from North America, two from South America, two from the Middle East, two from Asia/Australasia, one apiece from Africa and Eurasia, plus the host nation Spain.

The European Equestrian Federation (EEF) announced in April that, due to the global pandemic, the launch of the Longines EEF Series had been postponed to 2021. As a result, there will be no promotion and relegation this year, meaning that Division 1 will start with the same 10 teams for the 2021 season - Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden.

The FEI Tribunal has issued its Final Decision in a human anti-doping case involving an adverse analytical finding for the prohibited substance Benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine, and Amfetamine. Both are non-specified substances that are prohibited in competition under the 2018 WADA Prohibited List.

Samples taken from the athlete Jan-Philipp Weichert (FEI ID 10072662/GER) on 10 June 2018 during the German National Championships, CSI2* in Balve (GER) returned positive for the two substances.

The FEI Tribunal approved the agreement between the FEI and the athlete on 13 July 2020.

The Athlete admitted the violation and the FEI Tribunal accepted that the violation was not intentional, since the substances were consumed in a context unrelated to sport, the standard four-year ineligibility period was reduced to two years. The athlete has already served the ineligibility period, which started on 2 July 2018 and ended on 1 July 2020.

All results recorded by the athlete from the date of the event were disqualified. The athlete was also ordered to pay a fine of CHF 1,500. Each party will pay their own legal costs.

The Final Tribunal Decision can be found here.

The parties can appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) within 21 days of receipt of the Decision.

Notes to Editors:

FEI Anti-Doping Rules for Human Athletes (ADRHA)

The FEI is part of the collaborative worldwide movement for doping-free sport led by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The aim of this movement is to protect fair competition as well as athlete health and welfare.

WADA’s Prohibited List identifies the substances and methods prohibited in- and out-of-competition, and in particular sports. The substances and methods on the List are classified by different categories (e.g., steroids, stimulants, gene doping).

The List comes into effect on 1 January of each year.

As a WADA Code Signatory, the FEI runs a testing programme for human athletes based on WADA’s List of Prohibited List of Substances and Methods and on the Code-compliant FEI Anti-Doping Rules for Human Athletes (ADRHA).

For further information, please consult the Clean Sport section of the FEI website here and the FAQ on the WADA website.

Mexican showjumper, Federico Fernandez, had just arrived in Madrid (ESP) by train when I spoke with him last week. He was en route to a business meeting and had intended travelling by air from Valencia (ESP), but the flight was cancelled at the last moment. 

Considering his story, I asked him if he has any fear of flying. Federico was one of just three people who survived an horrific air-crash back in 1987, but he has more than come to terms with the tragedy that claimed the life of his friend and team-mate Ruben Rodrigues and at least 50 others. The horse transporter carrying the Mexican contingent to a Young Riders Championship in Chicago (USA) fell out of the sky and ploughed into rush-hour traffic on the eight-lane Mexico-Toluca highway before slamming into a restaurant on a drizzly Friday afternoon 33 years ago. 

“To be honest I never think that something bad can happen to me - the place I sleep the best is on a plane!”, he says.

My first close encounter with this remarkable man, who has competed at three Olympic Games and six FEI World Equestrian Games™ (WEG), was in the aftermath of his team’s historic victory in the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ in Dublin in 2018, when Mexico claimed the coveted Aga Khan Trophy for the very first time. I moderated the post-competition press conference that evening, and in all my years in the sport I have never experienced so much immense joy and such wild celebrations. 

And Federico’s words that day embedded themselves into my memory. “After what happened to me I feel an obligation to be happy, and today was one of the happiest days of my life!”, he said.

Family passion

His uncle, Fernando Senderos, won individual gold and team silver at the Pan-American Games in Mexico City in 1975, and Federico inherited the family passion for horses. He was nine years old when he first climbed into the saddle, and when I ask him about his childhood heroes he tells me that the legacy of individual champion Humberto Mariles and his gold-medal-winning military team-mates was still very much in place when he was growing up. They swept all before them at the London Olympic Games in 1948.

“Captain Mariles rode a small, one-eyed horse (Arete) and was a fantastic rider. It was the Mexican golden era of showjumping when they were the team to beat for about 10 or 12 years, we’ve never had anything like that since”, he says. 

However US riders were the big stars on his own horizon when he was child. “We heard a lot about Nelson Pessoa and the d’Inzeo brothers but they were faraway legends because we didn’t get to see them. The guys we had around the corner were Americans like Rodney Jenkins and Michael Matz, great horsemen. And at home Gerardo Tazzer was my trainer and I was lucky enough to jump on many Nations Cup teams and at the Olympics in Athens (GRE, 2004) with him”, Federico explains. 

Business

Riding hasn’t been the only thing in his life however. Federico is one of those exceptional people who successfully manage to combine careers in both business and sport. He was something of an entrepreneur in his teens. “I sold hot-dogs outside my school, and then got more and more hot-dog cars as I went along!”, he says.

“Mexico is an incredible country that gives you amazing opportunities”, he points out. He began his career by creating companies that functioned as service-providers to big corporations. “Then a few big international companies came to start businesses and I partnered with them and ended up selling the business to them. After doing that a few times I have a business with two arms - one providing small/medium businesses with a high level of services in terms of payroll, administration and human resources, and the other providing small businesses with loans to help them grow. 

“In Mexico we really need to support young entrepreneurs. I’m proud of what we do, and it makes me really happy when we can help people source a loan and build a secure business”, he explains.

However while researching his competition profile I was staggered by the number of horse shows Federico attends. How does he manage to combine his business commitments with his sporting endeavours?

“I’m an incredibly lucky man, I have an amazing team and with today’s technology you can stay on top of your business even if you are on the other side of the world. It works well because sometimes when you are doing horses it’s good to take the focus off them for a while, because we can forget that they are animals and need some time alone. When you dedicate too much time to thinking about new things to do with them then sometimes it goes backwards! And the same thing happens in business. Sometimes you need to step away so you can see the wood for the trees…..”, he points out. 

Federico talks a lot about having balance in his life. “I try to understand the things I need to get that balance, like family, horses, entrepreneurship. I love to eat and I love to travel, so I put everything in the mix and every few years check that the mix I have is the right one. Because that’s very dynamic, it changes, so you have to adjust from time to time”, he says wisely.

He is married to Spanish-born Paola Amilibia, ‘the love of my life’, who also competes for Team Mexico, and Federico has three children from a previous marriage - Juan Pablo, Eduardo and Federica. 

Mature young man

He was already a mature young man in his early 20s because he had been through a lot. He had only just returned to competition after back-packing across Europe for a year when the air-crash happened. The cargo plane was an all-but-obsolete 4-engine propellor-driven Boeing 377 that dated back to the 1940s, and it came down just seven minutes after take-off.

I ask him if it’s difficult to talk about the crash, and he insists it is not. “Incredible things came from it. At this point in my life it’s easy to say that, but if I could re-live my life I wouldn’t change it”, he insists.

His clothes were ablaze, and he suffered severe burns but survived along with two other people and just one of the horses on the flight. Hard as it is to believe, that surviving horse, Pepito, went on to compete with Mexico’s Everardo Hegewisch at the Seoul Olympic Games the following year.  

Federico doesn’t dwell on the horror of it all. “Everything happens for a reason”, he says. 

"It’s your will, your spirit, your determination, your power that turns a thing like this into something good instead of something that goes against you"

“Since that day I learned to not be worried about things that don’t matter, to really focus on the things you can change and not on the things you can’t, and to live every day like it’s your last. To create a life so that you go to bed hoping the night goes fast, because you really want the next day to start again. If you can make this your every day then you are a very happy person!”  

He had surgery on his face at least 50 times. In the end he decided he’d just had enough of it. “The difficult part was I was just 19 years old, and when you get your face destroyed at that point in your life you have to really spend some time re-organising your feelings. It made me completely change my scale of importance, and I started looking more into the inside of things and less into the superficiality of life. And I found a lot of comfort and happiness in that.

“It made me grow up very fast and made me a person I like better today. All kids are superficial, I loved riding and everything to do with it which in many ways is very superficial. Success - or not - with the girls was important to me, and my work was all about making money. But those things changed in a positive way”, he insists.

Back in the ring

He spent six months in a hospital burns unit in Galveston, Texas, and the doctors told him it would be a long, slow path to recovery. But he was back in the ring and winning his next Grand Prix in Mexico City a year later, and in 1989 he qualified for the FEI World Cup™ Jumping Final in Tampa, Florida (USA). That would be his first, and his last Final…..

“In Mexico we don’t have an indoor circuit because of our fantastic weather, so I qualified at outdoor shows and when I went into the indoor I realised for the first time that my eyes had some issues after they were burned. When I was looking at the light that came from lamps I couldn’t see where I was, and I’ve never competed in an indoor again. Daylight is ok and in stadium lighting (under floodlights) I see even better, but the problem is lamps. My pupils are in only one position and can’t adjust, so when I go from bright to not-so-bright then it’s like looking into a cloud”, he explains. 

I ask him what sporting successes he treasures most, and he tells me that every Grand Prix win is special. “I’m good at enjoying the moment when it happens. I try to enjoy it deeply because this sport is cruel in many ways, the next competition you have a fence down and the magic is gone very quickly! The good thing about Grand Prix classes is that they are on Sundays, so you’ve a whole week to feel proud knowing that maybe the next one won’t be so lucky for you!”

That Nations Cup win in Dublin two years ago and the team silver medal he earned alongside Gerardo Tazzer at the Pan-American Games in the Dominican Republic in 2004 are stand-out moments, along with finishing 13th at the WEG in Jerez (ESP) in 2002.

Favourites

When I ask about his favourite horses he doesn’t hesitate. "My darling Bohemio! He’s Irish-bred and the most amazing horse. He has been Mexican National champion and took me to the Pan-Ams, the Olympic Games and the WEG. In the Masters at Spruce Meadows (CAN) the Cana Cup is the big class on Friday, and there were only two clears and we went into a jump-off against Jos Lansink and Cumano who had just won the World Championships (in 2006) and we beat them, it was amazing! In 2008 he was the top horse in the summer series (at Spruce Meadows) but he was injured after winning a class. That injury ended his career, but he finished the best possible way with a win! He’s 28 years old now and enjoying his retirement out in my fields.”

And then there is Gitano, “a great Grand Prix winner in Mexico, not scopey enough to do the same in big Grand Prix competitions in Europe but a fantastic character and a winner. In Mexico he gave me so many successes that I really love him, for that and for his character. These two horses were not just very special in the ring, they also had so much personality, they gave you their best every time you rode them. When you feel that your horse is completely with you and willing to do anything for you that creates a kind of magic!” 

I ask Federico if there are any famous horses he would have liked to sit on, but he replies that he prefers watching them with their own riders “because I truly believe some couples are made in heaven!”  He lists Hugo Simon and ET, Jos Lansink and Cumano and John Whitaker ‘in my opinion the best rider in the history of the world’ with Milton as some of his favourites, along with Eddie Macken and Boomerang and Rodrigo Pessoa with Baloubet. 

And then he moves on to Rio 2016 individual Olympic champion Nick Skelton from Great Britain with Big Star. “Since London (Olympics 2012) Nick didn’t ride another horse, he was just determined to win that gold medal and he spent those four years helping the stallion to recover from a bad injury and getting him back into the sport only to show up up at the Games and win that gold - just brilliant!”, he says. 

Tokyo

I ask him if Landpeter de Feroleto, the horse that carried him to that historic Nations Cup victory in Dublin two years ago, had been aimed at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games before the world was brought to a halt by the pandemic. The horse is 18 years old now however, so hardly surprising that the answer was in the negative….

”I had planned with our Chef d’Equpe to give Peter his retirement tour this year, he’s been an amazing horse for many riders, he gave me the win at Dublin and also in the Nations Cup in Mexico and was very generous with me. Unfortunately with the Covid situation there have been no Nations Cups so it would be very unfair to stretch his retirement one more year. He isn’t on my list of favourite horses because he came to me when he was 15. If I’d had him since he was eight who knows what we might have done together. But he is a special horse with a huge heart who would do anything for you”, he points out.

Feredico is placing his hopes for Tokyo elsewhere, and the hiatus caused by the virus may just work to his advantage. “Coming into this year I was not in the best situation because I had a horse that was coming along but not ready. However one year more really benefits me in terms of my possibility, I have a horse that needed the extra time and now he will have it. His name is Grand Slam and I got him three years ago but he had a bad injury and was out for one year. Now he is strong and healthy and jumping great, so I think he’ll be in super shape”. 

Thoughts

Finally I ask for his thoughts about the pandemic and its effect. “I don’t want to sound like a preacher”, he says with a laugh, “but we’ve had the opportunity to slow down in a world that normally goes so fast. At some stage we have all felt annoyed and anxious, and in many cases - including my own - it was financially disruptive and took away our peace of mind. But we’ve been given a chance to take a really good dive inside ourselves, to understand who we are and to regain the understanding of how incredibly beautiful life is, and liberty, and the right to walk in the streets and breathe the air and smell the flowers, all of that. 

“And I honestly think that you always have to believe that the best is yet to come. We’ve been given a fresh start, so now is the time to re-prioritise things in your life, to put some dreams on the table, and to try to make them real. It’s in everyone’s hands to make that happen….”

 

The FEI and ClipMyHorse.TV (CMH.TV) have entered into an agreement that is set to change the future landscape of the global governing body’s live streaming services to millions of equestrian fans worldwide. CMH.TV is one of the world’s leading providers of live streams for equestrian sports.

“We are very excited with this new venture which is the result of open and productive conversations with the founder of ClipMyHorse.TV Mr Klaus Plönzke,” FEI President Ingmar De Vos said.

“This is the first time the FEI will have an equity stake in a company which will allow us to actively contribute to shaping the narrative around the coverage of equestrian events.

“By bringing together our collective strengths, we can work towards the development of one combined live streaming service that provides high quality event coverage and a broader range of content to fans.”  

FEI.TV has traditionally live-streamed all major FEI Series and Championships, with an extensive range of replays, special features and historic events coverage available live and on-demand. Subscribers can now view coverage of international, national and local equestrian events, with commentary provided in English as well as local languages. They will also have access to the largest archive of equestrian video content and an extensive database of information on athletes and horses.

“ClipMyHorse.TV’s comprehensive platform and their extensive experience with production and streaming services within this sector will allow for an improved viewing experience for FEI.TV customers, while the look and feel of FEI.TV will, at least for the moment, stay the same,” FEI Commercial Director Ralph Straus said.

“The depth of the combined offering is unique and will provide equestrian fans access to a wide range of events all under one roof, from top international events to local competitions, together with online equestrian magazines, documentaries and other relevant programming.”

Currently the FEI.TV online television platform is providing coverage of past events and special equestrian features free of charge to everyone while live sport is on hold.

“The market for OTT and streaming services has grown substantially and we have seen an exponential rise in online viewing,” CEO of CMH.TV Markus Detering explained.

“We created the CMH.TV platform in 2007 with the express aim of making horse sport events across the world accessible to fans and followers everywhere and at any time.

“By pooling our resources with the FEI, we will be able to offer equestrian fans a more in-depth and enriching experience that will make the sport even more attractive and to a wider global audience.”

It sounded like he was being dive-bombed by sea-planes when I spoke with Pedro Cebulka last week. “That’s another one coming over now”, he’d say with a laugh as our conversation about his life and times had to be put on hold again and again.

He and his wife, Janet, were staying at a cabin belonging to some friends on a camper-van trip around Vancouver Island in British Columbia just a few days before heading back to their Canadian home on the lake at Invermere. The man known in the equestrian world as “Pedro the Ringmaster” has an insatiable lust for travel, and simply loves being on the road.

To those who watch him turning chaos into order at so many of the major events on the international equestrian circuit it seems near-impossible that he has time to do anything else. But this multi-faceted character has significant business interests, a second home in Mexico where he and Janet live a different lifestyle, a great passion for music and for animal welfare, and a powerful sense of social responsibility. It’s quite difficult to keep up with him to be honest, but I give it my best shot….

“I have a Spanish first name, Polish last name, German and Canadian passports, a Dutch wife who is now also Canadian and two Canadian kids who also have German passports, so I’m really mixed up!”, he begins. However Pedro isn’t his birth name. He was born Peter Cebulka but changed it to the Spanish version after falling in love with the Latin outlook on life on his first visit to Brazil in 1976 at the age of 24.

Banking

By then he had already been very successful in the world of banking, and was on course for a university degree in Economics. But as he said when we spoke, “it wasn’t what I was meant for…..”.

He was only 15 years old when he took up a three-year apprenticeship at Deutsche Bank before moving to Hamburg where his career really took off over the next five years, “I was good at stocks and bonds and I worked my way up to the Stock Exchange”, he says. But, in his own inimitable way, Pedro also had a side-line. 

“A friend of mine had a lovely pub in Lueneburg, so I worked in the bank five days a week and on Saturday morning I was a bar-tender in the pub and on Sunday morning I was a waiter. I had Sunday afternoon off and then on Sunday evening I was a bar-tender again and I learned a lot from those days. How to communicate with all kinds of people from all walks of life, how to make them happy and comfortable and how to deal with them if there was a problem”, he explains.

A trip to Brazil dramatically changed the course of his career in 1976. “After three weeks there I decided to hell with Economics, the world is too beautiful, so I stayed in South America for five months and I never looked back!” he says. “I saw Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands, Machu Picchu, I learned Spanish and I met many wonderful people”. 

Chance meeting

With his new-found taste for freedom he set off the following year on a world tour with a group of friends, and on his way through Banff in Canada a chance meeting would turn his life in another new direction. “It was August 1977, and I met a Swiss guy who said he was working at a new equestrian centre called Spruce Meadows and that if I wanted a job I could work there as a carpenter/helper for a few days so I did that. And when we were laid off, the riding master Albert Kley who came from the same area as me in Germany, said I could help out at the show coming up in September so I stayed and worked on maintenance and other things around the showgrounds”, Pedro explains.

By then Ron Southern, founder of Spruce Meadows and Chairman of the Calgary-based ATCO Group, had encountered the enthusiastic young German and they formed a strong bond. “He treated me like a stepson”, Pedro says.

It was only the second year of the now world-renowned Masters Tournament, and Pedro’s multiple skills were called into play as an interpreter for visiting teams and their crews, as an announcer in German and Spanish and as a course-builder. Over the next five years he would divide his time between helping out at Spruce Meadows and working as a Tour Guide. 

“I was a Guide for several years in South America, Central America, South East Asia and in many exotic countries where I could help German tourists feel at home. It was a wonderful time”, he recalls.

Course-building

During this period he also expanded his course-building expertise under the guiding hand of the legendary British course-designer Pam Carruthers who was responsible for the development of Spruce Meadows in the early years. Both Pam and Ron Southern encouraged Pedro to go to Europe for experience, and in 1979 he assisted at the FEI European Championships in Rotterdam (NED) before being invited to help at Hickstead (GBR). He remembers one particularly frenetic afternoon at the big British event. 

“The course crew always took a break around 2.30pm, and one afternoon myself and a lady called Penny who was about 85 years old were the only ones in the arena when a rider came in. He had a refusal and destroyed an early fence so I had to run over and put it together again, and then he had another refusal on the other side of the arena and I was running around like crazy to find poles and trying to keep things going. And then he came down to the last fence and ploughed through that and it was a huge job to get it back in place before the next horse came in - all while the rest of the crew were having their afternoon tea!”, he says with a laugh. 

Pam told him there was no point in going on to Dublin Horse Show looking for work. “But after three days of pestering, Steve Hickey (Irish course designer) took me under his wing and I had the best of times working with him!”, Pedro says. It was all part of Ron Southern’s advice to stay open to new ideas. “At many of the old shows they would say ‘it’s tradition, we do it this way and we can’t change”, but in Spruce Meadows we borrowed the good ideas and always kept an open mind.”

From 1983 to 1985 Pedro enjoyed some special years working full-time at Spruce Meadows and managing the Equitana (now Equi-Fair) trade show. He and Janet were married in Hawaii in 1984, and their daughters Stephanie and Jessica arrived over the next two years. But in 1986 Pedro decided to leave Spruce Meadows for health reasons. He was burned out. “I loved what I was doing but physically it was too much, I’d start at 7am and work until midnight and I had high blood pressure”, he explains. 

Selling dreams

He took up a job as a salesman with Fairmont Hot Springs Resort in the Rocky Mountains, “I loved it because we were selling dreams to customers”, he says.  In 1988 he also got involved in a time-share business in Mexico, and then Don and Carol Seable invited Pedro to become a partner in the Fairmont business. A whole new chapter of his life was opening up, and he would go on to become a land developer in his own right and would establish his own condominium management company. But he didn’t sever his connections with Spruce Meadows. 

Asked to help at the in-gate as a starter for the horse shows, he jumped at the chance. “They wanted someone who knew the riders, who was strong enough so they would be listened to, but not a little little general yelling because now he thinks he’s a policeman!” Pedro learned a lot from these early days in command of the arena gateway. “It taught me to be kind but firm”, says the man who continues to show those two important qualities to this day.

I ask him if being so tall - at least 6ft 3ins - helps when he is trying to instil discipline into proceedings, and he laughs. “Yes, size matters, but what I find now after 43 years doing this job is that 43 years matter! Someone once said anyone can be a superstar for one year, but the best athletes are on top over a long period of time. Like the Whitakers, like Nick (Skelton), like David Broome, like Ludger (Beerbaum). I’ve been doing this job a long time”.

Here to help

He says he never found the job of getting riders into the ring promptly, or making sense out of chaotic prizegiving ceremonies or ceremonial occasions, a problem because his mantra to the riders is ‘I’m here to help you’. He had the ultimate pressure from the outset at Spruce Meadows with live TV demanding spot-on timing. “That’s where my German background kicks in - I give the riders the countdown and it has to be done. If someone is late going in I don’t say anything, but when they come out….”

He says that Mexican businessman and political advisor Alfonso Romo from the world-famous La Silla Stud in Monterrey tells a story about his first encounter with Pedro the Ringmaster.

“I was competing at Spruce Meadows and I was a sponsor of a new building so I was a VIP guest of honour and this guy (Pedro) calls me in Spanish. I’m a little bit late, just a minute or so, and when I come out he says to me very nicely, Poncho when you have the horse put away can you come and see me? He says I’ve 50 riders here with 50 different systems of working their horses and we have live TV. When you have your system you do what you want, but when you are in my ring you do my system or you’re going home!”  

Apparently Senor Romo didn’t do it again. 

"If everyone is late then the warm-up of 50 riders doesn’t work. I don’t have time to say please - I learned from Pamela Carruthers to do it in military style, we are here to work and that’s it. I may come across as a bit harsh, but in essence the word is “now!”"

Pedro says he’s doesn’t take it personally on the rare occasions that his instructions are ignored. “And I’ve learned over the last six Olympics that they are like nothing else. I’d rather have a rule broken then get a rider upset before they go in - the pressure they are under is incredible. But of course I have the TV director shouting at me so it’s a very fine line…”, he points out.

Stand-out moments

I ask about moments that stand out for him down the years. “There are so many I get goosebumps just thinking about them! There was Ian Millar (CAN) at the Pan-American Games in 1999 when he came to the gate - with a broken foot - and I’m telling him there are four more to go and you are in fifth, then three to go and now you’re in third, the next rider had eight faults and he was in silver and then the last rider went and he had the gold. It felt so good, he’s been a friend to me from the beginning….

“And the high five I got from Eric Lamaze (CAN) - I’ve been with him through good and bad - when he won the gold in Hong Kong (Beijing 2008 Olympic Games)! That evening I carried him to the media party on my shoulders and we were dancing and celebrating until four in the morning!

“Everyone is your friend when you win but for me a real friend is the one who is there when you are down, so Marcus Ehning (GER) at the European Championships in Mannheim (GER) in 2007 where Kuchengirl stopped again and again. He goes on the podium to get the team gold medal without jumping a single round and he’s crying with the medal around his neck…..I’ll never forget that. But I’ll never forget him winning the Global Final with her in Rio (Brazil) a few years later either. It was a huge win and I was there for that too - it was a great moment!” 

I ask him about the extraordinary costumes he wears in his Ringmaster role - what inspires them? “It all started when I bought a pink hat in Hawaii and people liked it. I went on to a military hat, a Mountie uniform, I put crazy things together wherever I went. In 2010 Animo sponsored my tails and now I have a few of them designed by Franco Dragone. I rent some of them too - they make people smile!”, he says. 

Music

The first time I met Pedro, back in the 1980s, he was playing a tin whistle at a party and he hasn’t stopped since. He’s a great musician and can be found entertaining all and sundry at every after-party. He inherited his musical bent from his mother and his craving for travel from the fact that his father never got to live out his travel ambitions.

Imprisoned during WWll, his dad just wanted to live a quiet life, never owning a car or a house and happy to go to work by bus, walking or cycling. He intended travelling after his retirement aged 60, but his wife died of cancer in 1976 while Pedro was in Ecuador. It’s a painful memory. 

“They had applied for passports to go back to Poland to see where she was born but my father said they should wait, and two weeks after my mother’s funeral the passports arrived and my father cried. He lived two more years. His first dream was to go to Hamburg - just 53 kilometres from where we lived in Uelzen - when the time was right, but he never made it. So I learned when you want to travel, you travel”, Pedro says with great sadness.

Positive outlook

But he is a man with a hugely positive outlook on life and who lives it to the full. He tells me he’s keeping fit, “I need that in my job”, he’s eating healthily, he cycles and he walks the family’s two rescue dogs every day. They were both strays, Santo attaching himself to Janet on Santa Barbara beach in California in 2011 and Mexi latching onto them when they overnighted in a parking lot at the Mexican border 18 months ago. 

“We are very much involved with dog rescue down in the Baja (California peninsula) and I do Master of Ceremonies at fundraisers to help out”, Pedro explains.

I finally ask him about his thoughts on coping with the current situation created by the pandemic that continues to restrict, and affect, life and sport. He says he’s inspired by para-athletes because they have so much to put up with, but never complain. 

“I can’t speak for people who have lost their jobs and everything, it’s too hard. But there are also people who could do better but let themselves get dragged down - you have to try to be positive and make the best out of it. 

“We send money down to friends in Mexico on the beach to help because it’s really tough for them. JustWorld (Pedro is an Ambassador) is an official FEI partner and works with thousands of kids who need food, so if you can help with this or any other charities then do. The world needs everyone to do their best right now”.

Not too many people have been to 17 Olympic Games in their lifetime, but retired British journalist Alan Smith most certainly has. In a career that spanned 48 years he reported on no less than nine Summer and eight Winter Games along with all the major equestrian Championships between 1960 and 2008. “And I enjoyed every moment of it!”, he said when we spoke recently.

His decision to call it a day after the Beijing Games marked the end of an era. The classic newspaperman who was always dapper in his shirt and tie, and whose battered brown-leather briefcase heralded the presence of journalistic royalty in media centres around the world, is sorely missed. He played a significant role in the story of modern equestrian sport, not just as a writer but also as a Committee member in the early years of the FEI Jumping World Cup™ series, and holds the respect and admiration of athletes, luminaries and colleagues alike.

He’s looking forward to watching racing from Ascot on the afternoon I call, and that makes me smile. No matter what event he attended he always liked to “have a flutter on the ponies” on any given afternoon. He inherited that passion from his father, whose ill-health during Alan’s teenage years led to his son’s decision to set aside the offer of a place at Reading University and instead take on a job with Brenards Air Services News Agency at London Airport - now Heathrow and one of the largest travel hubs in the world but, according to Alan “just a collection of prefabricated shacks back then!” 

He was only 18 years old at the time, “but quite frankly we needed the money, my father was too ill to work, and I have to say it was the best training I could possibly have had. You had to be fast and accurate, and the stories were immediately circulated to all the newspapers” he explains. A bout of the debilitating lung disease, Tuberculosis, brought this job to an end however.

Recovery

Following his recovery he worked in the Pedigree Department of the British Bloodstock Agency and then moved on to the Racing staff of the Sheffield Telegraph newspaper. But he wanted to return to his home-town of London, “so I wrote to all sorts of different papers, including The Sporting Life and The Telegraph (The Daily Telegraph)”, he explains.

His first encounter with the latter was a boozy one, not an entirely uncommon feature of the newspaper world in those days. “The Sports Editor, Frank Coles, brought me straight into the King and Keys pub next door where we drank for a couple of hours and talked about the best way to get from Sheffield to London because the motorways hadn’t been built at that stage, and then I put him in a taxi to go home and I went back to Sheffield”, Alan recalls. 

But when he got back, there was a letter from The Sporting Life offering him a job. So he phoned Frank the following day, told him about the job offer but said he’d rather work for The Telegraph, and was asked ‘when would you like to start?’ 

“If that letter hadn’t arrived I wouldn’t have phoned him and I’m sure he would have forgotten all about me, so that was lucky!”, Alan says with a laugh.

A bit of showjumping

Not long after he joined the Racing Department at The Telegraph, Deputy Sports Editor Kingsley Wright asked the new recruit if he’d like to ‘do a bit’ of showjumping coverage, and that request would begin the journey that would continue for almost a half-century.

In 1961 Alan covered the FEI Junior European Championships at Hickstead, and he was keen to do it again the following year so he cautiously approached his editor to get his approval. “He liked horses, he liked me, and he liked the things I’d done already. So his first question was “did we cover them last year old boy?”, and I said “of course Kingsley yes”, and he said “well you better cover them this year then”. However Alan didn’t explain that the 1962 Championships would be held in Berlin (GER). “So off I went and called into the Nations Cup show in Rotterdam on the way back, and from then on my international career was on its way!”, he says with another laugh.

By the end of that year he was just providing Kingsley with a list of all the events he intended to go to, “and until I stopped they never questioned where I was going, they felt I knew better than they did what ought to be covered and, needless to say, the places I travelled to were all the nicest ones!” 

He arrived on the equestrian scene at a really good time. “I was very lucky because showjumping was regularly televised and incredibly popular with the public, so in the 60s, 70s and most of the 80s every newspaper had someone writing about it”, Alan explains. 

Skiing

In those days the horse show season ran from March to October, so to keep him busy over the winter months Alan was additionally allocated skiing coverage in 1965. It wasn’t a hardship.

“My first outing was to St Moritz (SUI), ostensibly to cover the British Army Ski Championships but it just so happened the same week the World Bob Championships were taking place. Britain’s Tony Nash and Robin Dickson, who won gold in Innsbruck (AUT) in ’84, were defending their title and it was brilliant because they won again. For 34 years I covered winter sports, and the first Olympics I went to were winter ones in Grenoble (FRA) in 1968. And again we were very lucky, we had the most brilliant women’s team that year. Gina Hawthorn missed a bronze medal by 300ths of a second and was fourth. Britain still hasn’t ever won an Olympic alpine skiing medal!”, he points out. 

Alan recalls that one of the members of that women’s ski team was Di Tomkinson whose mother skied at the Munich Olympics and whose daughter, Emma Pitt, owned Supreme Rock - the superb Event horse that carried Great Britain’s Pippa Funnell to team silver at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney (AUS). “Three generations of Olympic connection there”, he points out. 

Luck on his side

He feels luck was on side in his early career with the launch of the showgrounds at Hickstead, the appointment of HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh as FEI President and the establishment of the International Alliance of Equestrian Journalists (IAEJ) by Max Ammann. Prince Philip invited a representative of the IAEJ to attend the FEI General Assembly in Brussels (BEL) and Alan filled that role, building a lasting relationship with the Duke whose presidency spanned 24 years. 

“He was a lovely man to deal with, straight and to the point. He wrote the rules for competitive Driving and he started the World Equestrian Games (WEG). The first edition of the WEG at Stockholm (SWE) was supposed to be a one-off, but it was so good they decided to do it again in The Hague (NED). However if The Hague had been the inaugural World Games there would never have been a second one!”, he says, reflecting on the event that ended in financial bankruptcy. 

Things moved on rapidly after the FEI Jumping World Cup™ series was created in 1978. “For the first 20 years that Volvo was sponsoring it I was on the World Cup Committee so I attended a lot of the shows. You couldn’t find a better sponsor’s representative than Ulf Bergqvist and he, Max (Ammann) and I became very close friends”, Alan explains.

The technological age hadn’t arrived, so reports were still filed to copy-takers from hotel telephones, and calls often took hours to be connected.

Arrival of the Tandy

The arrival of the Tandy, one of the earliest PCs, revolutionised things. Alan’s first encounter with one was at the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988 when all he had to do was type in his stories because The Telegraph sent a technician to transmit the copy. Alan remembers those Games well. “They were pretty dramatic because the Canadian sprinter, Ben Johnson, was disqualified for doping so we all had to cover that too and I felt like a proper newspaperman for once!”, he says. 

His first Olympic reporting gig in Munich in 1972 was even more memorable. “Britain claimed team gold in Eventing and Ann Moore and Psalm took showjumping individual silver”, he recalls. But the world was horrified by the terrorist attack that left 11 Israeli athletes dead, and four days before the end of the Games Alan received a distressing phone call from his wife, Maddie, who had given birth to their son, Alex, just four weeks earlier. “She told me he’d been taken ill and was in an incubator and not expected to survive. I couldn’t wait to get home, so I jumped on a plane the next morning and thankfully he did survive - and he thrived!”

Favourite horses

I ask him about his favourite horses from his era, and he first names Merely a Monarch. “He was a top-level Event horse ridden by Anneli Drummond-Hay, and because women weren’t allowed to ride at the Olympics in Eventing the horse was diverted to showjumping and within months was a top-class jumper. He was wonderful. Fulke Walwyn, a very successful racehorse trainer at the time, said he could have trained him to win the Grand National as well! 

“Cornishman was a great horse, he won (Eventing) team gold for Mary Gordon-Watson in Munich but she was injured before the previous Games in Mexico and Richard Meade rode him to team gold there. It’s a very rare horse that wins gold medals with two different riders at Olympic level. And he made nothing of the World Championship course in Punchestown in 1970 that caused havoc for so many others - he was probably as good a cross-country horse as I’ve ever seen.

“And Marion Coakes’ little Stroller who jumped his heart out in the individual at the Mexico Games to take silver. They were such a great partnership, very successful together all the way from Junior to Olympic level and a credit to the sport from beginning to end”, he says.

Favourite riders

And what about his favourite riders? “There were so many……(Great Britain’s) John and Michael Whitaker, David Broome, Harvey Smith…Harvey is such a character and he provided us with so many great stories! When he gave the judges the V-sign after winning the Hickstead Derby (in 1971), that was some day to remember - the publicity it attracted to the sport was phenomenal! 

“Bill Steinkraus (USA) was a really great rider and writer and he played the piano rather well too! And Bill Roycroft who broke his shoulder going cross-country at the Olympic Games in Rome but signed himself out of the hospital to ride the showjumping on the last day because otherwise Australia wouldn’t have won team gold! And Mark Todd (NZL), such a supreme horseman…..Alwin and Paul Schockemohle and Ludger Beerbaum (GER) were really nice guys and spoke better English than some of our British riders! Janou Lefebvre and Pierre Durand (FRA) - there were so many I can’t stop!”, he says.

I ask him to recall any bizarre happenings down the years. “There was a show in Tripoli, Libya in Col Ghadaffi’s day and a few British riders, Raymond Brooks-Ward and I and a couple of others were invited out there. The Grand Prix was won by a Libyan rider and suddenly the arena was filled with people shooting off their guns into the air - that was an unusual occasion I have to say!!

And then there was Lucinda Greene wandering around Fontainebleau (FRA) on dressage day in a sort of daze saying ‘I can’t find my horse, I don’t know where my horse is!’  when she was due to go into the arena just a few minutes later! The big stand-off between Tina Cassan (GBR) and the judges at the World Cup Final in Del Mar (USA) in 1992 because she said the clock started before her round began…that was epic, but Bill Steinkraus sorted it all out with his usual diplomatic flair!” 

Favourite memory

I ask for a favourite memory and of course I’m not surprised it’s a British one. “David Broome winning the World Championships at La Baule (FRA in 1970) - that was a fantastic competition. He was such a good rider. It was rare for any country to have two through to the Final four, and both David and Harvey qualified along with Graziano Mancinelli (ITA) and Alwin Schockemohle (GER). Mancinelli’s Fidux was a very difficult horse, but when David took his turn it was like he was riding on silk reins”.

And what about personal friendships made down the years? “Among journalists my great friend was Brian Giles of the Daily Mail who told me later that when we first met in La Baule he thought I was the most arrogant man he’d ever come across! Also Jenny MacArthur from The Times and Jenny Murphy from The Independent - I owe so much to Jenny Murphy because it was through her that I met Maddie”, he points out. In the course of his career Alan travelled the world with his lovely wife Maddie who sadly passed away in 2016. They were a beacon of togetherness on the circuit, and Maddie was always accompanied by the family dog when attending British fixtures.

Alan’s own equestrian exploits included “a bit of hunting” and the fun of competing in “The Scribbler’s Stakes”, a special jumping class for journalists at the world-famous Christmas Show at Olympia in London in 1973 and 1974 which were televised by the BBC. 

That was the heyday of equestrian sports coverage, when riders were household names, especially across Great Britain. Alan says it was the drive of people like Raymond Brooks-Ward and Bob Dean, creators of British Equestrian Promotions, that made the difference. 

"“They were so successful that in 1970 officials from the Football Association went to talk to them about how they could promote soccer, and look where that is today. Bob was prepared to do whatever was required to maximise publicity, even sending Ted Edgar out onto Kensington High Street riding a camel to promote Olympia!"

Legacy

Although Alan no longer frequents the equestrian circuit, his legacy is still very much in place. Throughout his career he set an example of professionalism, and the creation of the IAEJ has helped promote contact between journalists around the globe while also providing a conduit between the working equestrian press and the FEI.

He has always been a prolific writer, with not only years of newspaper coverage filed away but with his name on 14 book-covers including the latest - “Hickstead, A Golden Celebration” - published in 2010. And he’s not finished yet. He admitted to diving into his memoirs during his retirement, and they should make some reading when they see the light of day.

Looking back, Alan says he couldn’t have had a better career and that he enjoyed every minute of it. “The late, great Ian Wooldridge - for my money one of the best, and certainly the wittiest of sports writers - once told me he thought I had the best job in Fleet Street. And I wouldn’t disagree…….!”

 

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has handed down its decision on a horse abuse case. FEI Tribunal Decisions on a human anti-doping case and one equine anti-doping case were also published this week.

The abuse case involved the horse Sarab (FEI ID 105DP50/UAE), ridden by Abdul Rahman Saeed Saleh Al Ghailani (FEI ID 10114704/UAE) at the CEI3* President Cup in Al Wathba (UAE) on 9 February 2019. The case was opened by the FEI following a protest filed by Clean Endurance on 15 February 2019. In its Final Decision of 26 June 2019, the FEI Tribunal Decision ruled that the athlete had committed horse abuse and suspended him for 12 months from the date of the Decision. The FEI Tribunal stated that aggravating circumstances existed and that the athlete also had to take some responsibility for the actions of his Support Personnel. The athlete was fined CHF 4,000 and ordered to pay CHF 1,000 towards the costs of the judicial procedure. All results achieved by the athlete and the horse at the event were disqualified.

The athlete appealed the FEI Tribunal Decision to CAS and a hearing was held at the CAS headquarters in Lausanne on 20 January 2019. The CAS upheld the FEI Tribunal decision, but reduced the athlete’s suspension to eight months as the Tribunal’s conclusion of aggravating circumstances was not substantiated. The CAS ordered the athlete to pay the fine and legal costs imposed by the FEI Tribunal. Additionally, he was ordered to pay CHF 3,000 towards the FEI’s legal fees.

The CAS Decision can be found here.

Separately, the FEI Tribunal rendered its Decision in a human anti-doping case involving the athlete Emma Augier De Moussac (FEI ID 10017125/CZE). Samples taken from the athlete at the CSI3*-W Designated Olympic Qualifier for Group C in Budapest (HUN), 26-30 June 2019, tested positive for the Prohibited Substance Hydrochlorothiazide. The FEI Tribunal accepted the agreement reached between the FEI and the athlete in its decision of 16 June 2020, after the athlete was able to establish that the Prohibited Substance entered her system accidentally through a supplement and that she therefore bore No Significant Fault or Negligence for the rule violation. As a result, the standard two-year ineligibility period was reduced to one year, running from 28 June 2019 to 27 June 2020. All results achieved by the athlete at the event were disqualified, plus all results obtained by the athlete between  the date of sample collection (28 June 2019) and the voluntary provisional suspension imposed on 23 December 2019. The athlete was ordered to pay a fine of CHF 2,000. Each party will bear their own legal costs.

The Final Tribunal Decision can be found here.

The FEI Tribunal also rendered its Decision in an equine anti-doping case, which involved the horses Linkin Park (FEI ID 105RH03/MEX) and Come Back (FEI ID 104SH43/MEX), ridden by Nicolas Pizarro (FEI ID 10002381/MEX). Samples taken from both horses at the CSI2* in San Miguel de Allende (MEX) on 12-15 March 2020 tested positive for the Banned Substance Ractopamine. The FEI Tribunal accepted the agreement reached between the FEI and the athlete in a decision on 26 June 2020. The athlete was able to establish that the source of the Prohibited Substance was contamination of the feed at the feed production plant and that he therefore bore No Fault or Negligence for the rule violation. He will not serve any period of ineligibility, apart from the provisional suspension he had already served since 21 April 2020. The results of the athlete and horse at the event were disqualified. Each of the parties will pay their own legal costs.

The Final Tribunal Decision can be found here.

In the two FEI Tribunal Decisions, the parties can appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) within 21 days of receipt of the Decisions.

Notes to Editors:

FEI Equine Prohibited Substances

The FEI Prohibited Substances List is divided into two sections: Controlled Medication and *Banned Substances. Controlled Medication substances are those that are regularly used to treat horses, but which must have been cleared from the horse’s system by the time of competition. Banned (doping) Substances should never be found in the body of the horse and are prohibited at all times.

In the case of an adverse analytical finding (AAF) for a Banned Substance, the Person Responsible (PR) is automatically provisionally suspended from the date of notification (with the exception of certain cases involving a Prohibited Substance which is also a **Specified Substance). The horse is provisionally suspended for two months.

**Specified Substances

The FEI introduced the concept of Specified Substances in 2016. Specified Substances should not in any way be considered less important or less dangerous than other Prohibited Substances (i.e. whether Banned or Controlled). Rather, they are simply substances which are more likely to have been ingested by horses for a purpose other than the enhancement of sport performance, for example, through a contaminated food substance. Positive cases involving Specified Substances can be handled with a greater degree of flexibility within the structure of the FEI Regulations.

Information on all substances is available on the searchable FEI Equine Prohibited Substances Database.

FEI Anti-Doping Rules for Human Athletes (ADRHA)
The FEI is part of the collaborative worldwide movement for doping-free sport led by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The aim of this movement is to protect fair competition as well as athlete health and welfare.
WADA’s Prohibited List identifies the substances and methods prohibited in- and out-of-competition, and in particular sports. The substances and methods on the List are classified by different categories (e.g., steroids, stimulants, gene doping).

The List comes into effect on 1 January of each year.

As a WADA Code Signatory, the FEI runs a testing programme for human athletes based on WADA’s List of Prohibited List of Substances and Methods and on the Code-compliant FEI Anti-Doping Rules for Human Athletes (ADRHA).

For further information, please consult the Clean Sport section of the FEI website here and the FAQ on the WADA website.