The Peninsula
Doha, Qatar - Qatar was elected to the membership of the European Conference of Arab Horse Organisations (ECAHO) Executive Committee during ECAHO Annual General Meeting held in Rome on Sunday. Qatar Racing & Equestrian Club (QREC) was represented in the meeting by Hassan Al Mannai, QREC Head of Show Section, and Saad Al Kubaisi, QREC Deputy Head of Show Section.
Al Mannai, received 21 votes, the second highest number of votes obtained by a candidate, securing him a place among the nine members and the chairman of the ECAHO Executive Committee.
Such success in the elections highlights the standing of Qatar’s equestrian sport worldwide and QREC’s commitment to realise its vision of promoting Qatar as a world hub for the equestrian sport. The latest success follows another achievement by the country after the Qatar International Purebred Arabian Horse Show was promoted to a title show, which is the highest level of horse show events in the world. It has put the Qatari event on equal footing with the World Arabian Horse Championship held in Paris, France annually as the top event of its kind worldwide.
The election to the membership of the ECAHO Executive Committee also coincides with massive success of the The Amir’s Sword Festival, which was concluded at QREC on Saturday.
Commenting on this new achievement, QREC CEO Nasser bin Sherida Al Kaabi said: “The election of Qatar to the membership of the ECAHO Executive Committee is a natural outcome of the progress of our horse shows, especially as ECAHO monitors all shows worldwide and is aware of the level of each country whether in terms of organisation or quality of horses. I’d like to thank Issa bin Mohammed Al Mohannadi, QREC Chairman, for his valuable support and commitment to develop all QREC-organised activities and events and to ensure optimum representation of Qatar and QREC overseas as was the case with Hassan Al Mannai, QREC Head of Horse Show Section, whom I’d like to thank as well for his efforts during the ECAHO Annual General Meeting. No doubt, the election of Qatar to the membership of the ECAHO Executive Committee will be in favour of the Arabian horse shows to be held in Qatar in future.”
Al Mannai, was elated with the success in the elections.
“I’m very happy that Qatar was elected a member of the ECAHO Executive Committee. I had the honour to be the representative of Qatar in the Annual General Meeting. In fact, I felt the strong appreciation by most of the delegates of the 28 countries represented in the meeting of Qatar’s commitment to Arabian horse shows. Now, Qatar will have an influential representation in the ECAHO Executive Committee by working towards progressing such shows worldwide and increasing the number of top-level ones as well as abandon those, which aren’t very useful,” Al Mannai said.