By Louise Parkes

It was announced yesterday that Ireland will be making a strong bid to stage the World Equestrian Games (WEG) in 2014 with the animal health company Alltech already committed to taking up the title sponsorship and the newly-established umbrella body, Horse Sport Ireland (HSI), giving its full backing.

Alltech has 1,900 staff, a presence in 113 countries world-wide and annual group sales of $400m. The company, which is headquartered in the US, is headed up by Irishman Dr Pearse Lyons who was joined by sports marketing expert Jim Host at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, where details of the 2010 World Equestrian Games in Kentucky were also released.

The legacy of Ireland's humiliating failure to stage the WEG in 1998 following a successful bid is a thing of the past according to Lyons who said: "that was then, this is now -- Ireland has come a long way since then".

Whether the Board of Directors of the international equestrian federation, the Swiss-based FEI, can be persuaded to believe that when the 2014 Games are allocated later this year Ireland will be in the reckoning remains to be seen.

Funding

However, the Dublin-born UCD graduate and his team believe they have come up with a risk-free template for the staging of the event that avoids dependence on Government funding.

The highly-successful 2006 WEG in Aachen attracted 576,000 spectators but despite the fact that show jumping has a huge following in Germany, government support was needed to make it happen.

With seven disciplines including jumping, dressage, eventing, driving, endurance, vaulting and reining it is a massive and expensive undertaking ,but Lyons put up $10m to secure the title for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Kentucky in two years time and is willing to put up the same amount again in order to bring the event to Ireland four years later.

HSI Chairman, Joe Walsh, said the new organisation will give Alltech its full support.

Meanwhile, last Thursday night Ronan Corrigan was elected new Chairman of The Show jumping Association of Ireland and yesterday Cameron Hanley won the opening international competition in Leipzig, Germany where the World Cup qualifier takes place tomorrow.