Foreign owners and Transfer Windows – Saddle up…it ain’t football

Friday 20 April 2012

Equestrian sport’s version of the transfer window shut at the end of December, but the results are only fully apparent now.

Many people are not aware that few top riders own the horses they compete on. Instead they ride and train with a horse that is owned by someone else who is free to sell the horse to anyone they choose.

In the run-up to any Olympic Games, there is a deadline of 31 December the year before to complete sales, and late-qualifying countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been scrambling to find world-class horses for their riders. Thus, rather like professional footballers, there’s also a transfer window for horses.

The British Olympic team lost three top show jumping horses to foreign rivals before the window closed, and Sweden nearly poached a British dressage horse considered a leading contender for Olympic gold. However, there is still strength in depth in the GB show jumping squad and in this Olympic year, 2012 promises to be just as exciting as 2011 thanks to a host of loyal owners.

Millions of pounds have changed hands, much of the cash coming from the Middle East.

Why has the British team allowed this to happen, and how much damage will the loss of three leading horses do to British hopes at London 2012?

The answer is that the fate of those horses was never fully in the British team’s hands.

If the owner is presented with an offer for the horse that they consider too good to turn down, there is nothing to stop them selling – regardless of the consequences for the rider or a nation’s Olympic hopes.

There is always a deadline, on 31 December the year before an Olympics, where horses have to be registered for the nation they’re going to compete for.

For some of the nations that qualified for the Olympics fairly late, it became a scramble to try to find Olympic-standard horses. That has happened in the past before Olympic year, but what’s different this year is that the Middle Eastern countries – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and so on – are now actively involved in the top end of show jumping.

Consequently the Middle Eastern countries have moved the whole sport and business to a new level. As in the case of football where certain clubs (such as Manchester City and Chelsea) have large transfer budgets, so it has become with show jumping where horses at international and Olympic level are expensive, probably between £500,000 and £2.5m each.

The transfer window before an Olympic year is therefore always a worrying time for riders keen to hang on to good horses.

But unlike a football team, which can at least normally choose whether or not to sell a star player during a transfer window, riders are usually powerless to affect the outcome if an owner receives a hefty bid.

Though the circumstances were not identical, British trio Guy Williams, Bruce Menzies and Robert Smith all lost horses in December as the all-important Olympic window closed.

Horses and riders affected as Olympic transfer window closed:

• Talan – competed for GB with Robert Smith, sold to Saudi Arabia
• Titus – competed for GB with Guy Williams at 2011 European Championships, sold by Williams to Australia he said: “I have to run a business”
• Sultan V – competed for GB with Bruce Menzies is owned by a Saudi prince. When Saudi Arabia qualified for the Olympics, the pressure on the prince to support his own nation became very great. His decision was he’d like the horse to participate for Saudi Arabia.
• Uthopia – ridden to European dressage gold and silver by Carl Hester, who narrowly saw off late bid from Sweden. Hester, who owns a minority stake in the horse, frantically set about trying to raise sufficient cash to head off the Swedish bid. While most people were enjoying their Christmas break, the world number two faced a question mark over his Olympic future before the Swedish finally gave up the chase on New Year’s Eve.
• Sanctos Van Het Gravenhof – bought for GB’s Scott Brash, who is now riding the horse for the first time in the United States, for a reported £2m. The horse had been due to compete for Ukraine

The news has not been all bad for the GB show jumping squad. Several other owners turned down large bids for horses expected to star in British colours at London 2012, while show jumper Scott Brash picked up a horse that had been due to compete for Ukraine, the owners paying a reported £2m.

Other loyal owners turned down offers for their horses and said, ‘No, we want to go to the Olympics and try to get into the team’.

But for a lot of people – riders and owners – it’s a business, and the only way to keep going is to sell every now and again. An additional difficulty is that show jumping does not attract a huge amount of commercial sponsors that can take the pressure off the riders. The sport is not like Football or Formula 1 where you have international global brands offering to put in several million pounds.

As with any team in any sport it is important to have strength in depth and the problem with show jumping is losing three Olympic standard horses means losing some of that depth. If you have an injury to one of the other horses now in contention, you have fewer to choose from.

So as in football, the rich teams, namely those with foreign owners or investors, are the only ones who can afford to match the “biggest stars” inflated transfer fees (and in the case of football, also salaries).

As a result, those owners, teams and nations who have access to significant wealth can buy success whatever the cost and at the same time squeeze the smaller owners by making offers “they cannot refuse”, not just to buy the best as well as success but to weaken the opposition and so at the same time those owners, teams and nations getting stronger themselves!

Whilst due to the nature of the sport, top riders are unlikely to become the focus of some form of transfer fee, the time could arrive that the “offering” which wealthy foreign owners can put on the table in terms of individual investment, facilities and quality of equine, our best riders become exclusively “tied” and move abroad to ply their trade where there are also greater tax benefits – like footballers…only time will tell?