Meet the Cairo Team Competing at the Longines Global Champions Tour

When the Longines Global Champions Tour arrives at the Great Pyramids of Giza from October 22nd to 24th, Egypt will host more than an individual show jumping Grand Prix. Alongside the riders competing for the €1 million individual prize, the event will also bring the Global Champions League’s team championship to Cairo, where the Cairo Pharaohs will compete on home ground for a team whose identity is rooted in the city, but whose roster reaches well beyond it.

The distinction matters. The Global Champions League is not a national team competition. Its teams operate more like international sporting clubs, assembling riders of different nationalities under a shared name. At each event, two rounds of competition determine the teams’ results, which feed into a season-long championship. Individual form matters, but so do the combinations selected to compete and the points each team can accumulate across the calendar.

For the Cairo Pharaohs, that competition has an added dimension. The team is making its GCL debut this season, and Cairo is the penultimate stage before the championship concludes in Rabat. Three riders from its wider roster will compete at the Pyramids: Egyptians Nayel Nassar and Sameh El Dahan, alongside American show jumper Zayna Rizvi.

Nassar is among the most accomplished names in the line-up. Born in Chicago and raised in Kuwait, he has competed for Egypt at the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympics, while building a record of major wins on the international circuit. He has claimed the HITS $1 Million Grand Prix three times and won the $1 Million Queen Elizabeth II Cup at Spruce Meadows. His role in Egypt’s return to Olympic team show jumping was significant, too: a double-clear performance at the 2019 Nations Cup in Rabat helped secure the country’s first team qualification in the discipline in 60 years.

El Dahan’s career has taken a different route between national teams and the international circuit. After five years representing Great Britain, he returned to the Egyptian national team in June 2026, having spent more than 15 years competing in Europe. In 2018, he won the Longines Global Champions Tour Grand Prix of Paris, followed by another major Grand Prix victory at Spruce Meadows in Canada. His return to Egyptian representation brings an internationally established rider back into the national fold.

Rizvi, meanwhile, represents the younger generation of the sport’s international field. The American joined the Cairo Pharaohs in July 2026 during the GCL’s mid-season transfer window. Before stepping into senior competition, she won individual gold at the North American Youth Championships in consecutive years, 2021 and 2022, and team gold in 2021. She made her senior Nations Cup debut in 2023, the same year she received the Lionel Guerrand-Hermès Trophy, awarded in recognition of achievement in equestrian sport.

Together, the three riders illustrate how the Cairo Pharaohs are assembled: two Egyptian show jumpers with extensive international experience and an American rider whose career has progressed through youth and senior competition. They will enter Cairo as part of a club-style team, rather than a national selection, but the home stage gives their results immediate relevance to the team’s season.

The Pharaohs currently sit 15th among the 17 teams in the Global Champions League standings, with 146 points. With Cairo followed by the final leg in Rabat, there are two remaining opportunities to improve that position. The team’s Egyptian debut is therefore more than a home appearance: it is a chance to add points before the championship reaches its conclusion.