The eventing World Cup series has been dropped, the FEI announced at its annual meeting on 8 November.
The FEI World Cup was a series of CIC (one-day) events that originally boasted 16 legs and a high-value final, but had fallen to five legs — one of which was cancelled — and no final this year.
It lost its title sponsor, the HSBC banking group, in 2010 and tried a number of formats before being suspended following this year’s series, won by Swiss rider Felix Vogg.
Eventing committee chairman Giuseppe Della Chiesa said the FEI hoped the eventing Nations Cup series — launched in 2012 — would fill its place.
“Federations are buying into the idea of a Nations Cup series that hopefully will be a substitute for the World Cup, which at the moment is not working so well,” said Mr Della Chiesa.
The sole UK leg of the competition was held at Chatsworth International Horse Trials.
It was won last year by Emily Baldwin (pictured). This year’s competition was cancelled due to bad weather.
Organiser Tissie Reason said the World Cup had been a useful marketing tool for the event, but added that the future of the class at the Derbyshire horse trials had been in question.
“Because there was no title sponsor, each event contributed around €4,000 to the prize-pot — you paid for the privilege of hosting it,” said Mrs Reason.
“We felt it was worth paying to keep the series alive and kept hoping it would find a sponsor, but I don’t know if we could have carried on.”
She said Chatsworth hoped to continue to run a CIC*** class with reverse order showjumping and a £5,500 first prize — to be called the Chatsworth Challenge.
