Year-End Endurance Videos from Endurance-belgium.com

January 10 2014

Leonard Liesens has created three new slide-show videos reviewing Endurance-belgium's last few endurance riding seasons:
Tribute to the Endurance Horse
Endurance Eldorado - Heaven or Hell
Endurance Riding and Amazones.

Liesens and Caroll Gatelier supplied the photographs that compose the slideshows from events in France, China, Russia, Italy (European Championship at Assissi), Czech Republic (European Championship at Most), Lexington, Kentucky (World Endurance Championship), Euston, UK (Workd Endurance Championship), and Idaho.

UAE: Dubai endurance race draws top horsemen

Gulfnews.com - Full Article

HH Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Endurance Cup includes strong UAE contingent

By Leslie Wilson Jr, Racing & Special Features WriterPublished: 12:31 January 9, 2014

Dubai: Some of the UAE’s best endurance riders will face strong opposition from a high-quality field of international horsemen as they vie for honours in the HH Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Endurance Cup presented by Longines this weekend.

The seventh running of the 160-km CEI 3-star event is one of the highlights of the Dubai Equestrian Club (DEC) endurance calendar and traditionally attracts some of the best endurance riders in the world.

Organised and hosted by the DEC at the purpose-built Dubai International Endurance City course next to the Bab Al Shams Desert Resort & Spa, the ride will be flagged off at 7am on Saturday...

Read more here:
http://gulfnews.com/sport/horse-racing/dubai-endurance-race-draws-top-horsemen-1.1275723

Journalist recognised for coverage of endurance scandal

Horsetalk.co.nz - Full Article

By Horsetalk.co.nz on Jan 07, 2014

British journalist Pippa Cuckson has received an award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism for her reporting of the scandal surrounding endurance in the Middle East.

The award was announced by the International Alliance of Equestrian Journalists...

Read more here:
http://horsetalk.co.nz/2014/01/07/journalist-recognised-coverage-endurance-scandal/#.Us16xmRDtLU

Malaysia: Azizatul back at the top

NST.com.my - Full Article

7 January 2014
By ZAINUDDIN MUHAMMAD | nstsport@nst.com.my

MOMENT TO CHERISH: She is set to be named 'World Rider of the Year'

SHE'S done it again! Azizatul Asma Abdullah is the world's highest ranked youth endurance rider again despite slipping to fourth place in the world ranking just over two months ago.

Even better, the 17-year-old Kuala Terengganu born is set to be declared 'World Rider Of The Year', a first for a Malaysian endurance rider.

Back in September, Azizatul made history by becoming the first Malaysian youth to be ranked first in the world but she slid down to fourth after missing a few races to prepare for her Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination...

Read more here:
http://www.nst.com.my/sports/other/equestrian-azizatul-back-at-the-top-1.456634

Oman: Vets Leave Nothing to Chance as Endurance Race Season Enters Second Half

Muscatdaily.com - Full Article

Muscat Daily staff writer
January 06, 2014

MUSCAT -

With the 2013-14 endurance races now midway in their season, the schedule for the horses, their riders, keepers and also veterinarians is busy.

How the horses perform, depends a lot on their training. Vets and trainers leave no stone unturned to see that the horses get the best of food and training for these races. As per the events calendar, five races were held last year and four more are slated this year, with the first race of 2014 on January 17 at Barka village.

Dr K P Nisar, veterinary surgeon associated with training of horses at the Ministry of Sports Affairs’ Oman Equestrian Federation, said the horses are made to follow a strict training schedule. Many precautions need to be taken and vets are constantly checking on their fitness.

“This is the time when the horses are ready to entertain viewers with a display of their talent. They also need to be healthy and fit,” he said.

Vets keep a close watch on the diet. For a horse to excel, its diet should have potassium and sodium salts in the right amount. Intravenous fluids give them the energy for long runs. There are blood tests every two weeks, Dr Nisar said...

Read more here:
http://www.muscatdaily.com/Archive/Oman/Vets-leaving-nothing-to-chance-as-endurance-race-season-enters-second-half-2u03

IAEJ Announce Winner Of 2013 Bureau Award: Pippa Cuckson (GBR) for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism

Equijournalists.com

The International Alliance of Equestrian Journalists (IAEJ) has announced today that British journalist Pippa Cuckson has been awarded the 2013 Bureau Award, which is decided by members of the IAEJ Bureau. Cuckson has long been a credit to her profession but it is her intrepid reporting of the scandal surrounding the endurance sport in the Middle East for which the Bureau wishes to recognize her with the award for 2013.

Established in 2012, the award was created to honor members of the equestrian community for outstanding contributions to the industry. George H Morris was the inaugural recipient.

Cuckson has boundless enthusiasm for getting to the heart of the matter while always adhering to the principles of journalism. Having started out in newspapers, she spent 20 years on the editorial team at Horse & Hound, latterly as deputy editor. Following a seven year break working in the racing industry, Cuckson resumed journalism as a freelance in 2009, contributing regularly to The Daily Telegraph, H&H, Horse Sport International and Chronicle of the Horse. She is also a frequent contributor to Country Life writing on a range of topics, notably classical music and renewable energy, the latter for which she was recently presented with a journalism award by leading UK political weekly, The Spectator.

Cuckson’s concern about the high rate of horse fatalities, injuries and doping cases in Middle East Endurance, goes back to the late 1990s, when she was deputy editor of Horse & Hound. In April 2012 she attended the endurance debate at the FEI open forum and made the salutary discovery that things had become significantly worse in the last decade. She reported the debate in a number of publications but then began to dig deeper. “Largely though, I was unable to interest anyone in stories about it, firstly because of the distraction of the London 2012 Olympic Games, and also the reluctance, fear even, of critics to go on the record,” says Cuckson. “This is still a factor now. A number of key stories circulating on the internet still have not had the proper scrutiny they deserve in mainstream publications.”

Finally, a window of opportunity came in April 2013 with the doping scandal at Godolphin.

“A number of racing media were looking for connections between Sheikh Mohammed’s racing and endurance operations, because his disgraced Godolphin trainer, Al Zarooni, had previously worked in an endurance stable run by trainer Mubarak Bin Shafya who is well known to the FEI Tribunal,” explains Cuckson. “I then spent four solid days reading every single FEI Tribunal report involving the UAE, and tortuously tracking who owned the horses through the FEI database and national federation website. The sheer weight of doping cases from stables owned by Sheikh Mohammed or other members of his immediate family was astonishing.”

Timing is everything. Just as Cuckson was coming to grips with the enormity of the problem and the implications for horse welfare, the Belgian and Swiss Federations were intensifying their lobbying of the FEI. “I wrote a piece for the Daily Telegraph pulling the various strands together and it has snowballed from there.”

Cuckson does not view her commitment to this issue as a crusade.

“I am just doing what any news reporter ought to be doing, because this issue provides a snapshot of the two issues that will ultimately destroy equestrian sport as we know it – our responsibilities to horses when we use them as a piece of sporting machinery; and how the moral compass of stakeholders seizes up when they get a sniff of big money.”

Cuckson will be presented with the award at the IAEJ General Meeting during 2014 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Normandy, France.

UAE: Hamad guides Loca Linda to victory in Endurance Cup

Khaleejtimes.com - Full Article

Hisham Al Gizouli / 5 January 2014
Shaikh Mansour and Shaikh Hazza attended the races

Hamad Obaid Rashed Al Kaabi partnered his eight-year-old crossbred mare Loca Linda to victory in the CEN 100km Al Ettihad Endurance Cup For Private Owners Only (UAE) at the Emirates Endurance Village here on Saturday. The winner covered the distance in 3 hours 34 minutes and 40 seconds at an average speed of 27.950km/ hour to cross the finish line two minutes ahead of Uruguayan contender Jaonatan Rivera Iriarte on board nine-year-old Part Arab mare HC Golden Queen. Yousif Mohammed Hassan Al Hammadi, astride Arabian gelding Sangha Fageole, was a minute away back in third.

Meanwhile, 84 riders from UAE and elsewhere started the race under ideal winter weather conditions, but only less than half of the field (34 riders) have completed the race or passed the final vet test...

Read more here:
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/sport/inside_sport.asp?xfile=/data/nationsports/2014/January/nationsports_January25.xml§ion=nationsports