The Jumping Mechelen international dressage and show jumping competition, hosted annually in Mechelen, Belgium, in between Christmas and New Year, has lost its CDI 5* status due to sponsorship issues.
This is the second major blow for the Mechelen Christmas Horse Show, who already saw its World Cup CDI-W status taken away in 2012 by the FEI Dressage Committee with the official reason that its dates conflicted too much with other World Cup qualifiers held in December at the time (Frankfurt, London).
Mechelen was able to continue its CDI leg by getting sponsored by the Dutch company World Dressage Masters headed by Camil Smeulders. As the financial backing was not secured in 2016, the Mechelen show organisation was forced to drop its status from 5* to 4*.
"At the moment World Dressage Masters has not been able to fully pay its sponsorship of 2015 and has indicated to have found insufficient sponsors for 2016 and thereby ending our existing agreement which still ran in 2016," Mechelen show director Peter Bollen told Eurodressage. "Because Jumping Mechelen can not find sponsors for the CDI 5* at such short notice, we have decided to organize a CDI 4* for 2016. For 2017 Jumping Mechelen will be looking for a new title sponsor for Dressage. If we don't succeed, the future of dressage at Jumping Mechelen will very uncertain."
Photo © Dirk Caremans
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