Next weekend, “the Grand Slam of Indoor Showjumping” trots into town, as AsiaWorld-Expo hosts the Longines Masters equestrian extravaganza.
The series kicked off in Los Angeles last September, moved to Paris for the second leg in December, and culminates here, in Hong Kong, with the third and final stage. In October, at the Sports Industry Awards Asia 2016, held in Bangkok, the Longines Masters of Hong Kong won gold, for “best live experience at a professional sporting event”.
As the horses gallop at high speed, spin around hairpin turns and soar over fences, their riders – the best showjumpers in the world – will compete for prizes worth US$670,000.
Christophe Ameeuw is the founder and chief executive of EEM World, the company behind the Longines Masters Series.
“I wasn’t good enough to be a professional showjumper. To survive, financially, you need to be in the top 20. So, instead, I established a beautiful farm in Belgium, where I buy, breed, train and sell showjumping horses. We have over 100 horses, and that’s my primary business. I think of myself as a gentleman farmer.
“It’s frustrating when you devote your life to horses, but the rest of the world knows very little about your passion. Showjumping doesn’t have a big profile, like tennis or Formula One, and for a long time it remained very staid and conservative – more like a boring garden party in a field than an exciting sport. So I set out to reinvent it. My mission is to make showjumping a thrilling spectacle – to attract new fans and put it under the spotlight, where it belongs.
“I’ve done this by creating a new type of showjumping tournament, with the emphasis firmly on ‘show’. I stage it indoors, in a smaller ring, so the spectators get right up close to the horses. It’s dramatic and theatrical, with the horses as the actors, performing under state-of-the-art lighting. We plant microphones around the jumps, so the spectators can hear the horses breathe and the sound of their hooves as they gallop and hit the jump rails. You can really feel the action, which enhances the experience in a big way.
“And we changed the rules to make the show shorter and faster. In standard competitions, a rider has four seconds added to their time if their horse hits a rail. That’s such a heavy penalty that the rider cannot win, so they give up and slow down. At our events, the penalty is only two seconds for a rail down. The rider still has a fighting chance, and responds by increasing their speed, to make up the time lost.
“For me, [the Longines Masters] is a dream come true.”