The Global Champions Tour determines the season planning of the world’s best show jumpers. A total of 36 million euros in prize money will be paid out. The most important series in equestrian sport is a guest in most capitals or at least world cities. Only in Germany everything is different.
The stops after the start this weekend in Doha sound very tempting: Miami Beach, Mexico City and Madrid. The most important series of equestrian sports stops in well-known and popular places, most of which are capitals or cosmopolitan cities like New York. But in Germany, Hamburg and Berlin are no longer part of the Global Champions Tour. “It’s really a shame,” says world-class German rider Marcus Ehning: “It’s particularly regrettable that there are no longer any major tournaments in the capital.”
It sounds strange at first: later in the season, the best riders in the world travel to the village, to Riesenbeck in Westphalia, after stations in Paris and Monaco for the tenth stage of the million-euro series. The only German stage takes place in the district of Hörstel, which has around 6,500 inhabitants and is also not exactly fashionable.
This is not a coincidence, because Ludger Beerbaum has built up an equestrian sport empire in the Tecklenburger Land region in recent years, which organizes several international tournaments every year. “Riesenbeck is absolutely equal as a tournament,” said Ehning about the strange-sounding tournament location in the middle of the metropolis: “You saw that during the European Championships.”
At the European Championships two years ago there was plenty of praise for the organizing team from Beerbaum, who wants to repeat last year’s success at the start of the tour in Doha on Saturday. The second exception in the ranks of cosmopolitan cities is the provincial town of Valkenswaard. This is where the Dutch tour founder Jan Tops lives.
With Hamburg, the Global Tour loses the tournament with the most tradition and the most spectators. But that doesn’t seem to be a criterion anyway, even if Tops likes to advertise with the saying: “My vision is clear. Only the best for the best.” The Derby has been part of the series since 2008 and has not signed a new contract. “It didn’t fit together anymore,” said tournament organizer Volker Wulff and spoke of “different objectives”.
In addition to the Hanseatic city, the capital is no longer part of the most important equestrian series, but for different reasons. “Economically, it has gone down,” said Wulff about the cancellation of the event in Berlin. After the end of the World Cup tournament in 2004 and the unique experiment in 2009 at the airport in Tempelhof, there was another attempt in 2017 to establish a large horse show in the capital. And it failed after just four issues. According to Wulff, the costs at the exhibition center under the radio tower were too high in the long run.
The globalization of equestrian sports has already claimed several victims in this country, especially in northern Germany with the end of the formerly important tournaments in Kiel, Bremen and Hanover. Riders like Ehning and Beerbaum now travel halfway around the world with their horses to pursue their sport. The Global Champions Tour with its 15 stages and the finale in Prague determines the planning. Because a total of 36 million euros will be distributed.
“The tour is now very important for us riders,” said Ehning. “It’s an important factor for us, economically and sportingly.” Most German top riders are members of one of the 16 teams and travel around the world. In this respect, Riesenbeck as a location has the advantage for at least three riders that they are at home for a tournament weekend: In addition to Beerbaum, Philipp Weishaupt and Christian Kukuk also live in the immediate vicinity of the arena. And for Ehning, it’s only an hour’s drive from his home town of Borken to the tenth stage of the tour.
