Browse > Home / Europe, Europe and British Isles, Global Champions Tour / Cannes will host the Global Champions Tour June 12 – 14, 2008




Cannes will host the Global Champions Tour June 12 – 14, 2008

June 5, 2025

Excellence on La Croisette

The “Cannes International Show Jumping Festival” is unlike any other event in the world of international equestrian competition. The site, just a stone’s throw from the Mediterranean, in a town where the almost perfect is not good enough, is unique. For 27 years, the competition has been able to ride with the times by offering the finest show jumping.

From the Renault-Jump in the eighties to the Global Champions Tour (GCT) today, via the fabulous Marina Picasso époque and Pulsar Triple Crown period, the Cannes Show Jumping Festival has always been able to differentiate itself, to the point of becoming one of the most highly-rated competitions on the international circuit. And when Jan Tops, president of the Global Champions Tour, was looking for the ideal site for the French round, it didn’t take him long. Cannes with its history, its very special stadium, the town of magic and stars, was the place to host a leg of the prestigious Global Champions Tour.

The Global Champions Tour brings a Grand Prix worth €300,000, which guarantees the best platform that exists: quite simply the world’s top 30, according to the Rolex Rankings. That says it all: all the great riders now organize their season around the GCT and talk about nothing else: “The Global Champions Tour has become a priority for the riders. This series is the best thing that has happened to the jumping sport”, as many riders vow. “It’s pure sport at its very best, with redoubtable challenges to be overcome. You go out into the arena with the same butterflies in the stomach as for a championship. These competitions are splendid and show off the horse in such a good light in an ideal environment.” The world’s number 4 is expressing roughly the same feeling as all the riders involved on this prestigious series. Whether it’s in São Paulo, Estoril or Monte-Carlo, the Grand Prix is a great sporting moment every time. Cannes, with its spectacular yet tasteful setting, is no exception to the rule. Cannes is also part of the superb “France International Circuit” set up by the French Equestrian Federation.

Cannes 2008 (12, 13 and 14 June) will be all of that. And even more: dressage will be making its debut on the French Riviera with an international 5-star competition, that is to say the very best, of course, in the International Equestrian Federation’s ranking. The program will be both opulent and stimulating and will stage this demanding discipline within a mesmerizing display of equestrian art. The program is the same as that of the Olympic Games or a final of the World Cup. With little plusses like the Grand Prix Musical Special, on the Friday evening, before the grand final, the Kür, or the Musical Freestyle where only the best eight will have the right to present themselves under the Hesperides Stadium’s lights on the Saturday at about 22:45! Revenge match of the recent World Cup final between the two divas of world dressage, Anky van Grunsven, from Holland, and Isabel Werth, from Germany? Probably!

Since the finest years of Paris-Bercy, Cannes is the first French event offering excellence in these two Olympic disciplines within the same arena. Three days of top-of-the-range sport where women will inevitably be in pride of place since the “Amazons” area currently riding high at the top of both world rankings! Cannes and Women, two words that have always gone well together on La Croisette.

Written by European News · Filed Under Europe, Europe and British Isles, Global Champions Tour 
Tagged:

Comments

Got something to say?

You must be logged in to post a comment.