The Jockey Club’s Thoroughbred Incentive Program has approved 167 horse shows to receive sponsorship during the 2012 season. As part of its efforts to encourage the retraining of off-the-track Thoroughbreds for other disciplines, The Jockey Club has committed $100,000 to be awarded to the winners of classes, divisions or high point awards in various disciplines.

The first approved competition will take place March 2-4 at the Twin Rivers Winter Horse Trials (Calif.), but the list includes many disciplines.

“We have all kinds of shows. We’ve got hunter/jumper shows, some three-day [events] and horse trials, regular dressage shows and some what I’ve termed mixed shows, where they have multiple disciplines going on,” said Kristin Hix, legal associate for The Jockey Club and the administrator of TIP. “A lot of those are also some charity horse shows, like ReRun and new locations.”

TIP received 211 applications from horse shows requesting sponsorship. Depending on the discipline, shows applied for support of individual classes, division high point awards or an overall high point.

“We were wanting to try to cover every level of horse shows because we understand that the Thoroughbreds coming off the track are obviously going to start at the beginning at maybe a local level show,” said Hix, Lexington, Ky. “But we also wanted to give recognition to the Thoroughbreds that are at the highest level of competition, so we tried to spread out the sponsorships as much as we could over all levels and all disciplines.”

The sponsorships are not affiliated with the U.S. Equestrian Federation, but throughout the planning process, TIP was in contact with national associations for guidance.

“This was approved as a pilot program for this year, so going forward we’ll probably tweak it and maybe work closer with those organizations,” she said.

TIP also launched a new website where all the information, including the winners of the future TIP-approved shows, will be listed.