ShowBiz Feature By Kathy Hobstetter From ShowBiz Magazine, 2009 T
he year the Rolex FEI World Cup Finals made its fifth appearance in Las Vegas, Nevada, it was an amazing equestrian event. But in the middle of it all were whispers that it would
also be the last time. As unfortunate as that would be, it is interesting to know how the Finals made their way to Las Vegas in the first place. I sat down with the man who knows the whole story, because basically, he wrote it. John Quirk acquired his love of horses through his wife,
Tish. A long time horsewoman, a very successful com- petitor, a renowned breeder and owner, Tish brought the horse 'bug' with her when they married and happily, John accepted the total package....a wife and lots of horses. Originally not a horse person, in 1980 John and Tish
purchased Horses Magazine. John wanted more from the publication, and he decided to learn the International sport of show jumping to change the track of his newly obtained project. “I studied it backwards and forwards and saw thousands and thousands of horses jump mil- lions of jumps,” he told me. “At that time I also went to the World Cup Finals in Gothenburg, Sweden. I thought it was the best event of them all, for the very reason that you had to earn your own way on. You didn’t have to rely on somebody choosing you or making a Team, you won your way on. I liked that." “When the Finals were in Paris, 1988, Tish and I were
on the train going over to Versailles,” he laughed, “and I started thinking, ‘I like the World Cup Finals so much, how come we don’t have one on the West Coast?’ It had been twice in America, always on the East Coast. I thought it would be a real fun thing to do and have it close to where I live so I said, ‘I’ll do that!!’.”
John began drawing up plans to have the event in Ve-
gas, then someone told him that Del Mar was building a big new arena. He jumped at the chance and in 1992 the World Cup Finals, and Johns dream, finally came out West. With the later addition of the FEI rule that the Finals had to be indoors, and because there was no roof over the Del Mar arena, there could be no future World Cup event at that facility after 1992. Happily, there was only one thing left
for John to do. “Well, back to the Las Ve- gas,” he quipped. “I figured by this time somebody would have thought of it, but nobody had. I talked to the major hotels and they all liked the idea, but everyone told me to go to a company called Las Ve- gas Events. I didn’t know what that was, because it was a new thing. It was created by the government to bring customers into town….. so off I marched to find them." “I went across town to Las Vegas
Events, introduced myself and over a pe- riod of a couple of years, AND it wasn’t easy at all, I convinced them that they
Top to Bottom: John and Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum; John and Pedro Cuebicka. Photos © Tish Quirk
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