The UKPA has unveiled a new initiative to ensure that the World Cup has the best possible playing horses available in July. As the UK are the host nation it falls to them to provide all the horses for the competition and the format of the competition this year, (which is slightly different to the format used in the previous two World Cups) means they need 120 horses (including the reserve pool of around 20 horses) to play the competition.

The World Cup committee, which is responsible for delivering the competition and the horses required, is believed to actually be very close to this target figure and think that they should make the number required, as the build up to the competition continues over the next few months and more people come forward to offer horses.

However, the UKPA Executive committee have now also launched as specific fund to help deliver more horses for the World Cup committee, so that the pools for the World Cup will be a strong as possible and also because they are believed to want up to 140 horses on the World Cup lists, in case any are pulled out of the competition late on.

In a message to the UKPA membership, the UKPA Chairman, Eric Jenkinson, encouraged the membership to look at this new initiative and see if they could help in some way via the fund (either financially or by looking after one of the fund’s horses in the run up to the World Cup) or by simply offering their own playing horse into the World Cup pools.

The UKPA has produced two information packs about the new horse fund; one for potential investors and one for potential riders. The links for these can be found below, along with the link to the full message from the UKPA Chairman on the UKPA website. People with queries about the Fund are encouraged to get in touch with Iain Heaton, the UKPA’s CEO, or Penny Webb of Australian Horse Training, as they are managing the fund and the horses within it for the UKPA and the World Cup committee respectively. Their contact details can be found in the information packs.

This is the second World Cup related announcement in two of weeks, following on the heels of the redone World Cup website which was announced last week. Up until now it has all been reasonably quiet on the World Cup front, and indeed there was some disquiet amongst the UKPA’s members at their AGM in November about the lack of regular news and updates on the event, but now with six months to go the World Cup committee, and also the UKPA, are believed to be readying themselves for a big promotional push to ensure that the event is as big and successful as possible.