UAE Riders Target Los Angeles Qualification In Aachen
Funnell's Squad Begins Championship Bid
The UAE Show Jumping Team has entered competition at the FEI World Championships in Aachen, Germany, its first step toward qualification for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games.
The FEI World Championships opened in Aachen on 11 August 2026 and run until 23 August 2026, with the show jumping segment staged from 19 to 23 August 2026 at Allianz Park in the Soers district, a venue widely regarded as among the most prestigious in the sport. The championships span six FEI disciplines, jumping, dressage, para dressage, eventing, driving and vaulting, while the seventh, endurance, is held separately near Abu Dhabi from 14 to 20 December 2026.
The same UAE squad will also compete at the Asian Games in Japan from 19 September to 4 October 2026, giving riders a concentrated run of championship competition over consecutive months and a further opportunity to accumulate qualification points and international experience ahead of the Olympic cycle's later stages.
Al Marzooqi And Sheikha Latifah Lead The Line-Up
The UAE roster features Omar Abdulaziz Al Marzooqi on Enjoy de la Mure, Abdullah Humaid Al Muhairi with Hudson de Vains, Humaid Abdullah Al Muhairi aboard Foncetti vd Heffinck, and Salem Ahmed Al Suwaidi riding Flonflon. Al Marzooqi, the first Emirati rider to medal at a Youth Olympic Games, at Buenos Aires in 2018, served as the UAE's flag bearer at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where he also advanced to the individual final, and his silver medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games has added further to the squad's collective championship record.
Sheikha Latifah bint Ahmed Al Maktoum, an Olympic competitor and multiple Asian Games medallist who has represented the UAE at the highest level of international sport for more than two decades, joins the team aboard Cornet XL, bringing considerable championship experience to a squad that also features younger riders Mohammad Al Ghurair and Mabkhout Alkirbi contesting the dedicated Young Riders events, including the STAWAG-Prize and the Prize of Sparkasse team competition.
A Blend Of Experience And Emerging Talent
Chef d'Équipe William Funnell, who also leads the squad in Aachen, praised the group's consistency through the season as the basis for selection, describing every rider as having earned their place through sustained performance and hard work rather than any single result. He said the group has already shown it can compete with the best nations in the sport, even as he acknowledged the standard in Aachen would be exceptionally high. The selected squad brings together riders with Olympic, Asian Games and World Championship experience alongside the sport's next generation, a structure the federation has pointed to as central to sustaining the UAE's competitiveness through the Los Angeles cycle and beyond.
Sheikha Latifah's continued presence on the senior team, more than two decades after her own championship debut, gives the squad a further point of continuity that riders such as Al Ghurair and Alkirbi can draw on as they build their own international records through the Young Riders events running alongside the senior competition. Her longevity at the top level of a sport that places heavy physical and logistical demands on both horse and rider is itself a marker of the depth the UAE programme has developed over the period she has represented the country.
With the show jumping competition not beginning until 19 August 2026, the opening days of the championship in Aachen give the UAE delegation time to complete the horse inspection process and finalise training routines before their own discipline gets under way, a preparation period team management regards as essential given the demands of a nine-day championship programme that will ultimately decide qualification standing heading into the final stretch of the Los Angeles 2028 cycle.
Funnell's own background as a British show jumping competitor gives him direct insight into the standard the UAE squad will face in Aachen, having competed himself against many of the same nations his riders now aim to challenge. That experience, team management has suggested, has been valuable in shaping realistic expectations for a programme still establishing itself relative to Europe's most decorated show jumping federations, while ensuring individual riders are prepared for the specific demands, both technical and logistical, that a championship of this scale imposes on horse and rider alike.
Enjoy de la Mure, Al Marzooqi's mount for the championship, has become a familiar partner for the rider across recent international assignments, and the pairing's continuity is regarded within the squad as a stabilising factor heading into a nine-day programme that will test both horse and rider across successive rounds of competition. With qualification places for Los Angeles 2028 still to be determined across multiple championships this cycle, the UAE federation has indicated that consistency of horse-and-rider partnerships, wherever practical, will remain a guiding principle in team selection through to the end of the qualification period.