This year the Al Khalediah European Arabian Horse Festival in Nowe Wrońska and at the Służewiec Racetrack in Warsaw will take place between the 19th-21st of August (Friday-Sunday). Similarly to a year ago it will be an international B show according to ECAHO ranking (August 19-20th) and an A-listed race for 4 year old and older horses over 1,600 m with a purse of 59,500 PLN (around 15 thousand euro) for the Al Khalediah Poland Trophy (August 21st).
The organizers decided to introduce some changes in regard to past editions. First of all there will be new main prizes.
“We took a very close look at the surveys filled out last year by the festival’s participants”, says Hubert Kulesza, the director of the Festival and Al Khalediah Poland stud, which hosts the event. “We wanted to know where we could offer even better quality. In line with the “We’re changing for you” slogan we are open to suggestions.
We are modernizing the infrastructure to make it even more friendly. We also wish to ensure better work conditions for the staff that arrive with the horses, so that everyone would feel more comfortable.
We are enlarging the general parking lot, building a parking lot for exhibitors and horse trucks with a permanent place to wash the horses, which we didn’t have last year.”
“We are not changing the formula, the prize money is staying”, continues director Kulesza. “We came to the conclusion that prize money helps – especially smaller breeders – to partially compensate for the effort put into preparing and training the horses, as well as managing such a difficult profession which is Arabian horse breeding. So every horse that qualifies for the top five in his class will receive a prize in the same amount as last year: 4 thousand PLN (around 1000 euro).”
“We are changing the brand and type of cars awarded as the main prizes for gold medalists”, explains director Kulesza. “We received opinions that although the Mercedes-Benz cars that we honored the winners with in the past editions were very prestigious, they weren’t very useful for horse breeders. So this time we are offering more functional vehicles. The winners of the senior championships will receive Ford Rangers, large pickups with all wheel drive, which will have no problem in pulling a horse trailer. For the other medalists we prepared the Ford Kuga (junior horses) and the Ford B-Max (yearling horses).”
“I would like to take this opportunity to thank our supporters, exhibitors, guests and sponsors and invite them to participate in this year’s edition”, sums up the Festival’s boss. “We hope that similarly to last year our event will draw more than a hundred horses. We have already heard from breeders that there is great feedback and that the show is stirring a huge interest.”
Entries will be accepted from June 20th until July 19th.