The Ride-away Express Eventing Challenge, the spectacular, fast-moving and hugely popular version of traditional three-day eventing is to return to this year’s CLA Game Fair, to be held at Harewood House in Yorkshire from Friday 31 July until Sunday 2 August.
The competition is sponsored by Ride-away, one of the UK's leading equestrian specialists, and will see 12 top horses and riders compete over one day in the three eventing disciplines of dressage, cross country and showjumping. Each event will be held in the CLA Game Fair Main Arena, enabling spectators to watch the whole of the high-octane competition from one seat.
The freestyle dressage to music phase takes place first, with riders and horses required to undertake specific movements in the order they choose in a “Strictly Come Dancing” style environment. This is followed by the cross country phase in which entrants tackle challenging cross country jumps, trying to stay within the optimum time allowance for the course.
The nail-biting showjumping phase is next, with riders having the option to choose safety or challenge themselves to erase four points from their score by jumping the final ‘joker’ fence which is higher than all of the rest.
Jill Gratton-Fisher of Express Eventing commented: “We are delighted to have been invited to return to the CLA Game Fair this year which gives us the opportunity to showcase Express Eventing to a large audience. If previous years are anything to go by, the competition will certainly provide edge-of-the-seat entertainment and it will be impossible to predict a winner. For people wanting to see the top names from the sport of eventing and get to meet their heroes this is certainly the place to be.”
Tony Wall, Director of the CLA Game Fair, added: “I am absolutely delighted that the Express Eventing competition is back for the 2015 CLA Game Fair. I know how popular the event is among our visitors who will be looking forward to watching a high-profile line-up of horses and riders competing for the winning trophy in what must be one of the most exciting horse and rider competitions ever seen!”
