After more than 500 hours of competition across three continents, 13 countries and 16 cities, the world’s top show jumpers are getting ready for the “Super Bowl of show jumping.”
The inaugural GC Prague Playoffs are the jewel in the crown of the Global Champions circuit, with a host of Olympic, world and European champions competing for record amounts in the Czech capital.
Held at Prague’s O2 Arena between December 13 and 16, the first indoor event in the 12-year history of the Longines Global Champions Tour will see riders battle it out for $13.7 million in prize money.
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Having won his first individual LGCT title this season, all eyes in Prague will be on Britain’s Ben Maher – the dominant rider of 2018.
“It’s become a dream season that wasn’t expected,” Maher told CNN EQ in Doha, where he won the 16th and final leg of the regular LGCT season, as well as securing the overall Global Champions League (GCL) team championship for the London Knights.
READ: Dominant Ben Maher soars to overall LGCT title
Explosion W
Maher, a former Olympic champion who is also the team manager of the London Knights, called his first individual LGCT title “one of my biggest achievements so far.”
The 35-year-old Briton managed to win the overall individual title with two relatively young and inexperienced horses, Explosion W and Winning Good, who are both owned by his backers, the British-American Moffitt family.
The nine-year-old Explosion W, a powerfully built Dutch warmblood, has been the breakout star of this season, finishing second in Shanghai in April in his first outing with Maher, before securing victories in Madrid, Saint Tropez, Rome and Doha.
The best is yet to come for the tall chestnut gelding, insists Maher.
“When I ride into the ring, he just grows, he can make you feel like you can do anything,” Maher said about Explosion, who has helped him earn just over $1M in prize money on the LGCT this season.
READ: Double delight for Big Ben in Doha
$3.4M for winning team
The GC Playoffs will pit the 16 winners of the individual LGCT Grands Prix this season against each other in the LGCT Super Grand Prix on Saturday 15 December.
The ground-breaking team championship, uniting riders from different countries on the same team, will come to a close with an action-packed, four-day event in Prague, that will see the top 16 teams vying for the $11.4M GCL Super Cup. The winning team will take home $3.4M in prize money.
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Jan Tops
The GC Playoffs are the brainchild of Dutchman Jan Tops, a former Olympic champion and current LGCT president, and American businessman Frank McCourt Jr.
Founded in 2006, the LGCT was designed to make the sport more attractive to a larger audience.
This season, the tour added two stops, Saint Tropez on the French Riviera and Prague, to a nine-month long calendar that also included events held on the Atlantic shoreline in Miami Beach, in Paris by the Eiffel Tower and beside the River Thames in London The tour also stopped in Shanghai, Monaco and Doha.
The GC Playoffs could see as many as 56,000 spectators at the O2 arena, which is a short walk from the city center and its picturesque Christmas markets at the Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square.
The new GCL team events are “a key strategic step forward in the evolution of our sport,” said Tops. “It will transform the experience for millions of fans around the world as they identify with the ups and downs of their favorite riders and horses.”
McCourt, the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers Major League Baseball team, said the team event format “will help prepare riders for the world-class competition they will face throughout their careers.”
McCourt, the current owner of French soccer team Olympique de Marseille, said the GCL “creates an unparalleled environment for the development of young riders and promising horses as they train and compete alongside the greatest names in show jumping.”