Hussard – What is behind your desire to keep going further in organising equestrian events?

Christophe Ameeuw – I have always had great ambitions to change attitudes in our sport by creating series. And I have always invested in my dreams of top-level showjumping to please the media and the general public, in order to attract sponsors and give them a return on investment. IMG-McCormack has been an inspirational company in this regard. McCormack came up with the idea of organising events, looking after their media coverage, inspiring a new generation with ambassadors for its events, and therefore closing the loop. I don’t want to organise too many events, but just enough – every two months, for example – to offer 360° communication year-round: in Paris, the talk is of Hong Kong, in Hong Kong the talk is of New York, in New York the talk is of Lausanne, etc. And the talk includes the partners and the cities that work with us throughout the year. For this communication, we need to develop a TV network, we need to be present with the digital tools for social media and we need to enhance all this over time. So there is work to be done as this concept has to be appropriate for Europe, Asia and America.

How do you ensure the durability of your events in the long term?

In several ways. One new initiative in this area is the creation of a Riders Lab: a laboratory that trains the riders and horses of tomorrow. Through a dedicated programme at our events, young riders selected by a well-known team manager, someone from my committee and the International Federation will be able to take part in five-star events, which they are not able to enter elsewhere.

So, in Lausanne, a select group of talented young riders was invited to take part in the Longines Masters alongside the best riders and horses in the world. This group – Pieter Clemens and Arnaud Doem from Belgium, Bryan Balsinger from Switzerland, Edward Levy, Alexandra Paillot and Agathe Vacher from France, Filipo Marco Bologni from Italy, Marcel Marschall from Germany, Jurre Van Bommel from The Netherlands and Hikari Yoshizawa from Japan – were all standard bearers for this Riders Lab at the Masters One City of Lausanne 1.55m.

So young riders are actors on the circuit, but elsewhere as well.

With the Riders Lab, we are creating a kind of star system for the future with the main actors in our sport, for the benefit of themselves, the public, the sponsors and our sport in general. The grandstands do not fill up by themselves. We must make every effort to communicate the attraction of our sport to as many people as possible. The objective is to invest in a new generation over the long term to ensure durability for everything we have created in terms of events. This programme has been set up with the EEM teams, and with professionals from our own sport and from other sports to broaden the experiences. We place these young people in the spotlight. All the EEM teams support them so that they express themselves properly in front of the media. And if any sponsors appear, we teach them to sell themselves to these sponsors appropriately and to negotiate with them. We need to ensure that we produce an attractive new generation for our sport.

You have recently launched a new initiative focussing on selling the best horses.

Yes, a new concept called The Auction, in collaboration with the auction house Arqana. Artcurial, which has an excellent reputation in France, invested in a racehorse auction house whose main platform is in Deauville, where the prestigious Yearling sales take place every year. I met the Arqana management and we created The Auction, presented by Arqana. Our sport is evolving and I think we need to transform how horses are sold in the same way as we have transformed how art is sold in the past 35 years. In other words, making everything official and visible. Arqana’s expertise in racehorses can therefore be brought into the field of show jumping horses, and my expertise and that of my clients into the field of racehorses. These two communities, with their extraordinary purchasing power, can exchange products. One can invest in the other, and vice versa. The first sale was very successful. In February, we held a live sale in Hong Kong, as part of Asia Horse Week, and in Deauville, also online, offering around twenty embryos created from some remarkable stock. Our objective is to provide the best offer on the market to the highest bidder.