Spruce Meadows’ Organizing Committee succeeded in restoring the FEI Rolex Ranking points for the events covered under its banner, after it was controversially removed by the FEI, following the new regulation that required the tournament to demarcate a minimum of $25,000 as guarantee money.

In the past, Spruce Meadows National had ten FEI jumping events that guaranteed valuable Rolex Ranking points to the winner. However, after the devaluation, many of these tournaments could not fulfill the minimum prize money requirement for FEI Rolex Ranking Point awarding events.

Spruce Meadows President, Linda Southern-Heathcott said that previously many of the $25,000 Spruce Meadows events allowed the riders to gain Rolex points; however, after the devaluation these tournaments were relegated non-ranking events, reducing their credibility. However, she was quick to add that the Organizing Committee had already made arrangements that restored the tournament to its earlier status, allowing the competitors to gain valuable Rolex ranking points.

The tournament is widely respected by the horse riding community, who flock to the venue because of its location and the quality of competition. Olympic champions Eric Lamaze and Rodrigo Pessoa can’t hide their displeasure at the FEI for relegating the competition.  According to them, Rolex points are very important for them but they would rather earn them against the best in the business than against much lighter competition in Europe. The exchange rate system adopted by FEI awarded the European tournaments and penalised the Spruce Meadows tournaments, due to currency rate fluctuations.

This view was seconded by Rodrigo Pessoa, who said that too much importance was being given to prize money, ignoring other factors like competitiveness, location, popularity of the venue and so on. The three time world champion said that any points won at the Spruce Meadows were well earned because of the higher level of competition.

The new FEI guidelines have the potential to adversely affect 16 FEI ranking events conducted by the Spruce Meadows Organizing Committee.

The Swiss watchmaker, Rolex, has been associated with sports since 1927, when Mercedes Gleltze swam across the English Channel wearing a Rolex Oyster wristwatch for the first time. At present the Swiss Watchmaker supports more than 150 events worldwide including golf, sailing, tennis, motorsports and equestrian tournaments. Rolex has given many a prominent names in the world of sports an opportunity to compete on a global platform and prove themselves. Rolex also sponsors cultural and arts programmes around the globe. The Rolex Young Laureates Programme is another Rolex initiative which nurtures young innovators in the field of science and technology, culture, education, and so on.

Tags: eric lamaze, FEI, Rodrigo Pessoa, rolex, Rolex Ranking Points, Rolex Young Laureates Programme, Spruce Meadows

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Rolex Culture, Rolex Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.