Villepinte (AFP)

International rendezvous popular with the best riders in the world, which mingle some personalities like Guillaume Canet, the Longines Masters of Paris riding starts Thursday in Villepinte for four days of competitions that could be disrupted by calls for strike against the pension reform.

Less than a year from the Tokyo Olympics, all the major show jumping experts have chosen to come face to face with the Masters, organized in conjunction with the Salon du Cheval.

The Swiss Olympic Champions Steve Guerdat (JO-2012), Brazilian Rodrigo Pessoa (JO-2004), Canadian Eric Lamaze (JO-2008) but also the four French stars of the gold medal at the 2016 Rio Games (Penelope Leprévost , Kevin Staut, Roger-Yves Bost, Philippe Rozier) made the trip to the Paris Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center.

The highlights will be on Friday night with a Riders Masters Cup - between a selection of Europe to an Americas selection and endowed with 200,000 euros in prizes -, a speed contest on Saturday night and a five-star Grand Prix on Sunday afternoon counting for the world ranking and richly endowed (300,000 euros).

- disturbed party? -

The party, which will be joined in particular the actor Guillaume Canet engaged on events, promises to be beautiful unless the calls to strike block visitors in their displacement.

"We are planning shuttles, we have to live with our times, I do not want to be influenced by this," says AFP founder Longines Masters, the Belgian Christophe Ameeuw.

"I can not go back, I can not, it's not possible," he slips as well.

On the side of the Salon du Cheval, with which the Masters takes place, the speech is the same.

"I can not go back, the car is launched and I can not stop it before the wall.I hope the shock will be the least violent possible," said AFP Jean-Luc Poulain, president of the Horse show, which hopes that the public will succeed to come by the road.

"We are making an effort to adapt schedules, we open before and we close later on Friday, Saturday and Sunday," said Jean-Luc Poulain, who offers some free parking and operations favoring carpooling.

The Longines Masters and the Horse Show attract "150,000 visitors hopefully, 110,000 visitors is the low range", according to Poulain who organized eleven editions, seven of which were impacted by various events (strikes, yellow vests, Cop21 , severe weather).

© 2019 AFP