We're not making a big political statement with more women riders - it's just that they're very popular

The Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup at Ascot on Saturday is going to look a little different this year as we are having six male riders and six female riders.

The change to the make-up of the teams has been made because we want to see whether it's tenable going forward to have a 50:50 split.

In an ideal world, we might have something like Europe Men, Europe Women, Rest of the World Men and Rest of the World Women, so there's more of an obvious editorial pull. But we’ve decided to reflect that there are so many more females riding now compared to when the event began in 1999 by having the Rest of the World team made up entirely of women while leaving the other teams as they are.