New York City, N.Y.—Sept. 19  

New York might have celebrated the big win of a hometown heroine last night in the $210,00 Central Park Grand Prix, presented by Rolex, but in the $50,000 NYC Vs. The World Speed Challenge, presented by Donald J. Trump, the team of The World emerged triumphant in the Trump Rink.

Irishman Conor Swail led The World team to the team victory with his ride on Landsdowne that topped all the other speed rounds. “I was fortunate that I have Landsdowne here; he’s my top grand prix horse so maybe it was cheating just a small bit,” Swail said with a chuckle. He and the charismatic chestnut twirled around the 1.35-meter speed class with shaved turns and bold gallops to win.

“It was a lot of fun tonight. Landsdowne has jumped a lot of big grand prix classes so it was fun for him to run around and go fast as fast as he could and enjoy himself. It’s fantastic to be part of such a fantastic event here. I think in the future it can grow to be one of the best shows in the world,” Swail said.

Swail’s win is what brought he and team captains Georgina Bloomberg and Kent Farrington to the press conference, but the conversation quickly turned to a discussion of the show itself. This is the first year for the Central Park Horse Show, and while they all agreed the show is off to a fantastic start, all the talk was also of improving for the future.

“To be able to bring sport horses right into the heart of New York City and have this backdrop is an amazing opportunity for our sport,” said U.S. Equestrian Federation President Chrystine Tauber.

“We’re going to be working together going forward to continue to improve this event. We’re very excited about it; it’s a wonderful venue. I think we look forward in the future coming up with some interesting events that we can really develop into a world-class show.  I think this is a world-class stage and we’ll make it into a world-class event in the future,” Tauber continued.

“I think that for the first year it’s been a success and I know they’ll put big efforts into making it even better,” Farrington said. “It’s a challenging setting to hold a horse show, but I think they’ve done a great job and I think the factors they’ll want to improve are all things you learn with experience. Every year, they’ll be able to make it a better and better show.”

Mark Bellissimo, CEO of the International Equestrian Group, the producers of the show, noted that the group has learned from putting on the Trump Invitational at the Mar-A-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. That venue is a location that hadn’t been used for a horse show before the inaugural Trump Invitational in 2013. “When we did the first Trump Invitational the footing wasn’t fantastic. We talked to the riders and asked what we needed to do, and we replaced the footing for the second year,” Bellissimo said.

“From my observations and some of the feedback we received, I think we can work with the ring. But the lighting, in two places in particular—under the trees on the far side and in this corner by the tent—can be supplanted with some other lights. We’ll fix the lighting,” Bellissimo said.

Some riders had noted that the 4-minute walk from the schooling area to the show ring in the dark caused the horses to be a bit surprised by the brightly lit show ring. Bellissimo noted that they’ll consider some daytime classes to alleviate this issue.

“We’ll go through and interview all the riders and get feedback. I do believe that this will be the No. 1 event in the world,” he said. “We’ve applied for five-star status. I think we can handle that level of event within the constructs of the venue.

“I think we can also work with USEF to figure out how to engage more people that are not necessarily fans already. How do you draw those people into the sport? We’re going to try and figure out the ticketing and seating. It’s very challenging.

“A lot of people have spoken about the prices of the tickets. I will note that we gave away 25 percent of the tickets of the night classes and 50 percent of the matinee tickets to the charities we chose to benefit. We sold out two of the three nights.”

Everyone who spoke characterized this first effort at a Central Park Horse Show as a solid base from which to grow the event. “I think this was a great learning experience for us,” Bellissimo said. “We wanted to put this on the world stage. We wanted to engage the press and get the riders to a comfort level with the event. I think a lot of people wondered things like ‘Is it going to happen?’ ‘If it happens, is the footing going to be OK?’ But after this year, I think people next year can think ‘OK, I can bring my best horse here.’ If we can get more prize money and a few more competitions, I think this has the potential to be a major stop on the world tour.”

Bellissimo noted that IEG has signed a seven-year deal with the Trump Rink, so the show has six years scheduled for the future.