The Mediterranean Championship

The Mediterranean Championship

Since 2006 Mediterraneo racecourse is the Italian seat of the Mediterranean Jockeys Championship, an annual race circuit organised in several countries facing the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, to which a jockey representing each nations participates.

Nine are the nations that competed until now in this event: Algeria, France, Greece, Italy, Morocco, Russia, Spain, Tunisia and Turkey. The circuit starts every year exactly in Syracuse, where the first leg and the Organising Committee meeting take place and continues with other five legs, tracing an ideal journey between Europe and Africa across the Mediterranean sea. From Syracuse the series moves in fact to Cote d’Azur racecourse of Cagnes-sur-Mer in France, goes then at Costa del Sol racecourse in Malaga, to Athens in Greece and, finally, to Casablanca in Morocco and to Algeri, where the jockey who gained more points in the classification is appointed Mediterranean Champion.

The Championship racing days furthermore become occasions to open the racecourses to the communities and to promote the resources and the traditions of the hosting country, by organising exhibitions, shows, meetings and events dedicated to the folklore, tourism and culture of the Mediterranean area. As the first article of the Championship regulations says, this event has the target (through the organisation of horse races in the participating countries), to celebrate the historical and cultural community of the Mediterranean countries, to promote friendly relationships and co-operation among their people, starting with the horseracing world in order to reach also the areas of culture, history, tourism and economics.

This sport event was in fact immediately able to target, through the effective trait-d’union of horse passion (a passion that does not recognise any borders), purposes of dialogue and community between the countries widely surpassing the simple challenge between champions on the track.

Syracuse opened the route, by organising in 2006 a meeting on the subject “Mediterranean Jockeys Championship: an occasion to start international co-operation between the Mediterranean countries and horseracing federations” with the participation of the Horseracing Federations of France, Greece, Italy, Morocco and Tunisia together with prestigious Italian Parliamentary national and regional authorities. The success of this event is certainly destined to a further growth.

In only two years of international co-operation it was in fact able to generate creative and fruitful exchanges and to establish effective and friendly relationships between the horseracing authorities of the Mediterranean area countries.

Each participating country engages itself now to send a jockey together with a federation official to the Championship leg and has the right to organise a race of the Championship in its country, with horses put at disposal of the foreign jockeys by the local stables. On the sport side, the Mediterranean Championship would like to become, as soon as possible, in addition to an athletes challenge, also a horses challenge. Beside the jockeys journeys, also the horses transport should be organised, in order to make possible that the nations could be represented in each race by a binomial horse/jockey.

This is an ambitious project. The horseracing Federations of the organising countries should in fact co-operate in order to create a race proposition that could permit to horses coming from totally different races realities and completely new to an international series experience to race together on an equal level. As a second aspect, they should find economical funds (through sponsors and public contributions) to finance the horses transport from one country to the other.

The horses participation to the races would on the other hand bring relevant benefits to the national breeding promotion of the various countries and would furthermore increase the public attendance as well as the media interest for the event.

On the social and cultural side, the Mediterranean Championship would like to involve as much as possible the Governments and the local authorities of all the participating countries. Because this event, beside being an occasion for a wide and profitable co-operation between the national horseracing boards, should also become an opportunity to create synergic relationship as well as cultural, social and economic exchanges between the participating countries.

It represents in fact an event that is able to produce aggregation also outside from the horse world, generating relationships that engage, in addition to horses and horsemen, also the real national communities.

The Mediterranean Championship is an example of what in the south and east of Europe people are able to do, by using dialogue and co-operation among individuals that are different for language and citizenship, but common for history, traditions and ultra millenary civilisation.

An example of how to change the Mediterranean Sea from a sea of borders into a sea of contacts and co-operation among the people in the fields of culture, social exchanges and sport.

It is an event that represents a sort of “buttonhole flower” for Mediterraneo racecourse and of which development we feel particularly proud.