The riders' lineup is full of illustrious surnames. Jessica Springsteen (the Boss's Amazonian and Olympian daughter), Haya de Jordania (former president of the FEI), Athina Onasis, Marta Ortega, Sira Martínez, Eve Jobs (Steve Jobs' youngest daughter, a Stanford graduate who changed Silicon Valley for New York in 2021) or Cayetano Martínez de Irujo are just some of the celebrities that CSIO Barcelona has summoned throughout its history.
It is one of the oldest and most prestigious jumping competitions in the world, which is organizing the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup world grand final for the tenth consecutive year, and has returned with the presence at the Olympic facilities of the Real Club de Polo de Barcelona of the representatives from Germany, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Switzerland, USA, Uzbekistan and Spain as the host country, who will try to take the title from Belgium.
With riders like the Swiss Steve Guerdat (number 3 in the world ranking), who has just won the European Championship; the German Philipp Weisshaupt or the Frenchman Julien Épaillard, silver and bronze from the same European competition, the competition brings together the equestrian elite. The great incentive of this edition is that the CSIO Barcelona is the awarding of the last Olympic place in Paris 2024 that will be up for grabs during the event.
The history of CSIO Barcelona dates back to the dawn of the 20th century. It was born thanks to an initiative of two horse lovers, Ramón R. de la Encina and Baron de Benimusleim, Lieutenant of Artillery, together with the secretary of the Agricultural Institute of San Isidro, Román Macaya, who proposed creating an international jumping competition annual. They developed the program and regulations for the competition and from June 12 to 15, 1902 they organized the first event in the parade ground of the Ciutadella park in Barcelona.
The social and sporting success was such that it was immediately consolidated. Barcelona City Council, interested in collaborating, donated 10,000 pesetas for prizes. In 1911, when the City Council gave the Ciudadela space to the Saturno Amusement Park, the CSIO organization moved to some land that the Club owned in Can Ràbia, where it was definitively established in 2017. It was an annual event that contributed to enhance, even abroad, the prestige of the then called Real Polo Jockey Club. Then, in 1932, the need to expand its space led it to its current facilities.
In its most recent history, the eighties were a crucial decade for the Club's future. Chosen as the venue for the jumping and dressage competitions of the Barcelona Olympic Games, the Real Club de Polo demonstrated its excellent organizational capacity during the most crucial milestone in its history. Even overcoming the parenthesis caused by an outbreak of African horse sickness in southern Spain, which stopped the CSIO between 1988 and 1992, the Olympic competition was a success.
