The show comes downtown
For financial reasons, the CHI left the Palais des Expositions for the Plainpalais plain, right across the street. It traded its indoor setting for an open-air arena, in the very heart of the city.
A move of only a few hundred metres — yet one that changed everything.
Three national shows
During the Second World War, there would be only three shows — national ones, no longer international. Just three gatherings, which nonetheless drew a huge crowd each time.
Stripped of its international dimension, the show lost none of its soul: it kept all the panache, all the prestige and all the elegance that belong to equestrian sport.
In a grey era, these editions offered the people of Geneva an escape, a reason to come together and to forget, for the length of a round, the anxieties of the moment.
Reinventing the show
When you live through complicated times, you reinvent. A different kind of show had to be imagined — and why not outdoors? A lighter event to stage, on a more flexible site, with far fewer constraints.
Out of that constraint came a freedom: that of an open-air show, closer to the people.
The last open-air show before a new chapter
Held from 22 to 25 August 1946 on the Plainpalais plain, this edition was the last ever contested in the open air. Although it welcomed renowned riders and kept an international character, it would ultimately not be recognised by the FEI as a full International Show Jumping Competition. That singularity makes it a one-of-a-kind edition in the event's history, poised at the transition between the war years and the gradual return to fully international competition.
The legends of the last open-air CHI
Two riders completed a double at that 1946 edition.
Pierre Jonquères d'Oriola
Geneva 1946, the birth of an international ambitionIn August 1946, Geneva hosted Pierre Jonquères d'Oriola's very first international show. He did not yet have the record that would make him a legend, but already the determination of a great rider. With his mare L'Historiette, he discovered a level of competition still shaped by the post-war years, as the benchmarks of European sport were slowly being rebuilt.
In that singular atmosphere, between summer heat and sporting renewal, the young Catalan rider laid the first stones of an exceptional career. Geneva became the starting point of a long story, made of loyalty to the show and of successes to come, all the way to the Olympic titles that would enshrine his name at the very highest level.
Jean d'Orgeix
The energy and daring of a rider in the makingIn 1946, Jean d'Orgeix embodied the youth that shook up and renewed the post-war equestrian world. With Sucre de Pomme, a horse he knew intimately, he arrived in Geneva carried by boundless energy and an ambition already firmly asserted.
In a sport still being rebuilt, he stood out as one of the faces of this "new wave" of riders. His bold style and his fire hinted at a promising future, in which great international successes would confirm what Geneva already let us glimpse: the emergence of an extraordinary talent, ready to leave his mark on his era.
“We spoke of passion, we spoke of friendship. We stood together to bring the event to life. When you keep a creative spirit, you can achieve incredible things — yesterday on the plain, today at Palexpo.”
Nearly 80 years later, the CHI relived the same story: reinventing the event to see it reborn.
The dreamed return of the CHI to Plainpalais
To picture the International Show Jumping Competition once again on the Plainpalais plain is to rediscover the spirit of the great editions of old, in a setting entirely open onto the city. In the heart of Geneva, this vast esplanade would offer a spectacular backdrop, where equestrian sport would converse directly with urban life, with the mountains as a distant horizon.
Under the summer sky, the obstacles would take their place again on ground steeped in history, in a freer atmosphere, closer to the public. The sounds of the city, the nearness of the spectators and the natural light would compose a unique, almost festive mood, echoing the great days of the open-air show. A vision in which Geneva would once again become, for the length of an event, an open stage devoted to the horse and to the elegance of the sport.
For now, this image is only a projection. An invitation to dream of the CHI's return to the Plainpalais plain — there where part of its history was written.
