Three endurance rides to be held in Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi: Three endurance rides will be held as part of the inaugural two-day Abu Dhabi Endurance Festival starting on Thursday at the Emirates International Endurance Village in Al Wathba, Abu Dhabi.

Sultan Saif Al Nuaimi, Director General of Abu Dhabi Equestrian Club (ADEC), told a press conference at the Eastern Mangroves Hotel on Tuesday evening: “This is the first time such a festival of rides is being held in Abu Dhabi. We start off with a 140km Three-star Open endurance ride on Thursday, which will be the feature event.”

“On Friday, we will be staging two rides, one a 120km national ride for private owners, and the second a national ride for ladies over a distance of 100kms,” he said.

Lara Sawaya, Director of the Shaikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Global Arabian Horse Flat-Racing Festival and Head of Ladies’ Racing in IFAHR, who also addressed the press conference, said the Festival has been awarded the HH Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan President of the UAE award for Best Sports Achievement.

“This is a great honour to the Festival, which is being held under directives and instruction from Shaikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs, and we are very proud by this endorsement,” she said.

“We are encouraged and inspired to achieve more through the festival for purebred Arabians in the future,” she added.

“The festival will be participating in a series of exhibitions and shows to be held both in Dubai and in Abu Dhabi and we will let people get acquainted both our activities as well as the purebred Arabian horse,” she added.

In a related development, Sawaya said that two more lady jockeys are being trained by Emirati trainer Majid Al Jahouri and one of them will be seen in action soon. “That brings the number of UAE lady jockeys to three,” she said.