THE popular Jumping in the City series will not run in 2017, Horse Sport Ireland confirmed to The Irish Field this week.

JITC, which won “Best Innovation in Sport” at the 2015 Industry Sports Awards, began as a three-part series in 2015 with legs at Cork and Limerick greyhound stadiums before the final at Shelbourne Park greyhound stadium in Dublin, and attracted big name riders like Billy Twomey, Cian O’Connor and Bertram Allen.

It was downsized to just one round at Shelbourne Park in 2016, with a tight schedule in the lead-up to the Rio Olympic Games cited as the reason. However, it will not return to the competition calendar for 2017.

Director of international marketing at HSI, Elaine Hatton, told The Irish Field: “Horse Sport Ireland won’t be running Jumping in the City this year. It is a proven concept and we would like to see it continue, but we are not in the business of running shows.

“We have invested heavily in the New Heights Champions Series this year and we want to drive shows up to that level, that is our main focus,” she added.

Munster Showjumping will, however, run two legs of their ‘Munster Stadium Jumping’ series at Limerick (Friday, June 9th) and Cork (Friday, July 11th) greyhound stadiums.

Meanwhile, the lead sponsor of the JITC initiative, Underwriting Exchange, are rumoured to be switching their sponsorship to the senior show jumping squad for the 2017 season.

Horse Sport Ireland would not comment on the speculation at the time of going to press.