The Longines FEI Endurance World Championship 2016 took place on 16 and 17 in Šamorín (SVK) at the x-bionic® sphere resort, the brain-child of Slovakian businessman Mario Hoffmann.
The state-of-the-art resort is ideally located in central Europe with easy accessibility from Bratislava (SVK), Vienna (AUT), and Budapest (HUN). It covers a total area of more than a million square meters and provides professional conditions for the performance of 26 Olympic disciplines. In the summer of 2016, the resort received the status of the Slovak Olympic Training Centre. The complex includes one of the most up-to-date and largest Olympic equestrian centres, a modern athletic stadium, first-class hotel and top congress facilities.
On Saturday, 17 September 2016 a total of 134 horse/rider combinations headed out on the 160-kilometre track in a 6am mass-start, with five loops of 40, 35, 35, 30 and 20kms running across grass, field and forest tracks alongside the river Danube and skirting around Bratislava at the foot of the Little Carpathians mountain range.
The event attracted athletes from a record number of 46 nations out of a total of 53 countries involved in international Endurance at the time.
The youngest competitor was 14-year-old Pilar Saravia from Uruguay. She had won her first 3* 160km ride on home soil in July 2016, with her second 3* 160km win in Buenos Aires (ARG) just two weeks before the event.
The championship had originally been allocated to Dubai and was scheduled to be held in December 2016, but at its in-person meeting held on 6-7 April 2016, the FEI Bureau voted to remove the championship from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as it felt that the UAE National Federation was not in a position to guarantee that horse welfare would be fully protected.
Following the Bureau’s decision to re-allocate the championship, the bid process was reopened. In addition to Šamorín, bids to host the event were received from Fontainebleau (FRA) and San Rossore, Pisa (ITA).
A unanimous proposal from the FEI Endurance Committee recommending the Slovakian venue received full Bureau support and the championship was allocated to Šamorín in June 2016.
On 17 September, Spain’s Jaume Punti Dachs riding Twyst Maison Blanche captured individual gold and led the Spanish team to gold. Punti Dachs’ 10-year-old grey gelding crossed the finish line in the time of 06:46:42 with teammate Alex Luque Moral finishing not a minute behind for silver on Calandria and deservedly winning the Best Condition Award.
Maria Alvarez Ponton, world Endurance number one at the time of the championship - who famously won individual gold at the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games™ 2010 seven weeks after giving birth to the first of her two daughters, and in doing so became the first Endurance athlete to hold both World and European titles at the same time – was also on the Spanish team along with her husband and eventual individual champion Jaume Punti Dachs. Unfortunately she had to retire at the second loop due to problems with the horse’s feet.
Bahrain took bronze as HH Sheikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa finished on a time of 06:49:47 on Waterlea Dawn Treader.
The team podium was 100% European with Spain first, finishing their three team riders in first, second and sixth place; France second and The Netherlands third.
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