Dressage World Cup

The Reem Acra FEI World Cup Dressage is an annual international dressage series involving the world's best dressage horses and riders. It has been held since 1985.

The history of the Dressage World Cup is closely connected to the history of the Grand Prix Freestyle. In 1984 Joep Bartels (former rider, husband of Tineke Bartels and father of Imke Schellekens-Bartels) saw Reiner Klimke and Ahlerich the flying one tempi changes to the Olympic hymn at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Inspired by this, he thought of a freestyle dressage competition.

One year later, the first Dressage World Cup was held. Each qualifier for the World Cup Final, which is held at the end of each season, consists of two competitions (Grand Prix de Dressage and Grand Prix Freestyle). From 1985 to 2001 both competitions counted for the qualifier results, which were part of the world cup ranking for this season. Since 2002, only the Grand Prix Freestyle has counted for the world cup ranking.

From 1985 to 2004 Joep Bartels was the director of the Dressage World Cup.

Reem Acra is the sponsor of the Dressage World Cup since the season 2010/2011.

Riders, who will be part of the Dressage World Cup final, have two options to qualify for this event.

The first option is, to qualify oneself by one World Cup league. There are four Dressage World Cup leagues:

Generally, only three participants per nation are allowed to participate in the World Cup final.

In addition, the FEI awards two extra starting places to riders that have not qualified for the World Cup finals. Unused starting places can also be allocated by the FEI as extra starting places.

To participate with a horse in the World Cup final, a rider (which starts in one of the leagues) has to start with this horse in two World Cup qualifiers. In this competition, the rider has to complete the competition with at least 68.000%.

The title holder is automatically qualified for the World Cup final, but he/she must also qualify his horse in the above called way. If he/she starts in a qualifier, he/she is not considered in the scoring (scoring points) of this event.

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