JEDDAH, 30 January 2008— Saudi veteran equestrian Khalid Al-Eid won the seventh round of the Arab Equestrian League on Monday in Abu Dhabi for his second straight victory in the 12-round series.
Riding aboard Al-Riyadh, Al-Eid was without any penalty finishing in 47.19 seconds in the toughest round thus far in the competition that began in early October.
While Al-Eid boosted the Saudi team confidence with his back-to-back victories, the Syrians were bothered by a second-place finish by Karim Al-Zughbi who had four penalty faults and clocked 42.65 seconds. Though the Syrian team led the Arab League since the start only Yassir Al-Shareif managed to compete until the next day.
The Kingdom’s Prince Abdullah ibn Miteb settled for third place with four penalties and a clocking of 44.8 seconds in the qualifying event for the All Tech FEI World Equestrian Games to be held in 2010 in the United States.
Fourth place went to Egyptian Omar Bashir who finished in 46.1 seconds (4 penalties). Qatari Awwad Al-Qahtani took the fifth position in 50.46 seconds (4 penalties), sixth place went to Egyptian Karim Hamdi (51.21 seconds, 4 penalties), seventh place to Al-Shareif (46.22 seconds, 8 penalties) and eighth place to Saudi Nassir Al-Bakmi (49.95 seconds, 8 penalties).
The results upset most of the riders who complained about the course setup on a grassy area and with higher hurdles. In Dubai, the competition was held on a sandy course which the riders claimed was better.
Al-Eid said the grass course exhausted their horses adding, “the sandy field is much better in our sport.” Qatari rider Ali Al-Rumaihi said, “ the field was very stressful unlike the previous smooth sandy fields and even hurt our horses’ feet.”
Mohammed Al-Kamiti, from the host country UAE, said, “ in this round Syria and us were not fortunate probably due to the high hurdles which forced us to use better techniques and that reflected negatively on both the horses and us. The results were not as expected and we emerged from this round as if we did not enter it.”
