Belgian Jorinde Verwimp has declined her invitation to compete at the 2016 World Cup Finals in Gothenburg, Sweden, on 25 - 27 March 2016. The Belgian cited time constraints as reason for withdrawing as the FEI only announced the list of participants for the Finals on 18 March.
Due to a large string of drop outs for the 2016 World Cup Finals, including Isabell Werth, Edward Gal, Beatriz Ferrer-Salat, Diederik van Silfhout and Charlotte Dujardin, the FEI had to go in search of extra competitors to fill up the empty spots based on the World Cup Ranking.
Belgian Jorinde Verwimp was one of them who qualified for the 2016 Finals due to a large number of withdrawals. However, the 21-year old Belgian, will not be taking advantage of this unique opportunity to make her World Cup Finals debut aboard her Dutch warmblood Tiamo (by Lester x Hemmingway).
"I'm very pleased that I had a chance to go there, but as I got this invitation so last minute we could not get everything arranged to go there," Verwimp stated officially. "I'm sure we wil get another chance to go to a world cup final."
To Eurodressage Verwimp said that, "three days is just too short to arrange it all. We initially really wanted to go but it just didn't work out to arrange such a long trip. The winter show circuit was really long and after the CDI Lier we gave Timmie a two-week holiday, putting him in the field and hacking him out, so I had only four days to pick up his training again. It's not fair to him to do that. It's a pity, but there will be a next time."
The FEI has not yet communicated whether Verwimp's spot will be filled by another rider.
Photo © Astrid Appels
Related Links
Participants Announced for 2016 World Cup Finals
Jorinde Verwimp Achieves Five in Five at 2016 CDI Nice
Eurodressage Coverage of the 2015-2016 World Cup circuit