Dressage to Return to Jumping’s Global Champions Tour, at Stockholm in 2019

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Dressage will return to Global Champions Tour which will stage an event in Stockholm in 2019 for the first time. © Pressbild

By PELLE WEDENMARK

STOCKHOLM, Nov. 29, 2018–Dressage will return to the Global Champions Tour at the inaugural Stockholm GCT event next June, a decade since its last pairing with the elite jumping circuit.

The announcement of the return of dressage to GCT was made Thursday by Sara Johansson, GCT Competition Manager in Stockholm, at the combined CDI5* Top 10 Dressage/CSI4* jumping in Stockholm this week.

Next year’s event during Stockholm Horse Week in June will be at the same stadium that hosted the first World Equestrian Games in 1990.

CDI5* dressage was first part of the GCT in Cannes, France in 2008 and 2009 that kicked off the now-defunct World Dressage Masters. Dutch superstar Anky van Grunsven won the first year on Painted Black and the second year on Salinero.
Anky van Grunsven and Salinero leading the victory gallop at the World Dressage Masters as part of the Global Champions Tour event in Cannes, France. © 2009 Ken Braddick/dressage-news.com

Sara Johansson said the Stockholm event is being designed to “suit Sweden,” which has widespread support for and participation in both dressage and jumping as well as major youth programs in both disciplines.

“We are building something from scratch and it is very fun,” she said, “but also a little scary.”

The Longines Global Champions Tour was created by Jan Tops of the Valkenswaard show in the Netherlands, and this year had spread to 17 cities around the world, such as Miami Beach in April, the French Riviera, beside the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Rome, Berlin, London, Shanghai and Doha, the capital of Qatar.