Qatar- Road to Rio: Home riders prepare for CHI Al Shaqab

3/1/2016 1:13:23 AM

(MENAFN- The Peninsula) An attendant at Al Shaqab Arena takes her horse out for a walk ahead of this week’s CHI Al Shaqab a top international equestrian competition. RIGHT: A file photo of Qatar’s Rio-bound show jumping star Sheikh Ali bin Khalid Al Thani.

DOHA: Home rider Sheikh Ali bin Khalid Al Thani and his Rio-bound team-mates Ali Yousef Al Rumaihi Khalid Al Emadi and Bassem Hassan Mohammed will be eager to pick up early momentum ahead of their show jumping debut at the 2016 Olympic Games.

All four riders featured at last week’s Emir’s Sword Meet a CSI5* event in which Sheikh Ali won a title besides finishing fourth the feature competition won by Portugal’s Luciana Diniz.

The quartet will now turn their attention to this week’s CHI Al Shaqab international equestrian competition 2016 which kicks off tomorrow.

“It was good to compete at the Emir’s Sword Meet because we are busy preparing for the Olympic Games” Sheikh Ali said.

“We have better horses that we didn’t run (last week). We will be running them at CHI Al Shaqab.

“We had a Qatari rider finishing second (in the main event). I finished fourth. Our riders did well” Sheikh Ali said. “We will forget this event now. We start again. We will try to do our best at CHI Al Shaqab” he said.

The four-day event will be a unique occasion for the Qatar’s Olympic show jumping team to experience a highly technical competition and gives them the opportunity to hone their skills in the various upcoming tournaments.

This should help them gain more confidence in the run up to the Olympic Games that will be held in August 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.

Qatar has a strong squad built around four key riders who were the mainstay of the team last year achieving a number of impressive results at Championship level.

Organisers yesterday said CHI Al Shaqab will play host to the opening event of the “Doha Tour.”

The first part of this prestigious competition will be at CSI3* level and will run concurrently with the other international competitions taking place in the spectacular arena at Al Shaqab. Doha Tour is the first of its kind in the Arab World. For the first time this year’s programme will involve three legs of the competition being staged at three different venues. It is a competition open to riders from all over the world but is expected to attract a number of Qatari and Saudi competitors of different skill levels.

For Arab riders it is part of the Arab League rankings for the 2016 World Cup Final to be held in Gothenburg Sweden at the end of March. The Doha Tour features CSI3 *and CSI4* competitions for elite riders but there is also a CSI2* competition for young and up-coming riders to score points and gain experience.

The Qatar Equestrian Federation will host the second leg from March 10 to 12 which will offer a CSI2* and a CSI4* competition. The third and final event takes place at Katara where again there will be a CSI2* and a CSI4* competition from March 24 to 26. The championship trophy will be awarded to the overall winning rider who has won the most points over the three events.The Peninsula

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