Brits battle it out for top prizes in Cannes

Pénélope Leprevosthas won the Global Chamions Tour (GCT) Grand Prix in Cannes on, while Britain’s best battled it out in other big classes.

Technical course

Many riders were caught out by the technical course in the GCT Grand Prix, including Scott Brash – who had an uncharacteristic eight faults riding Hello M’Lady.

Eighteen made it through the third round, out of 48 starters, and a further four combinations went on the jump-off

All four jumped clear for the third time, but Penelope and Ratina d’la Rouserrie posted the fastest time of 36.86sec.

‘Really hot’

“Ratina is a 10-year-old, freshly arrived at the top level,” said the French rider. “It’s the first time I tried to be really quick with her. She is quite hot so I usually try to calm things down with her and ride her quietly, but this has broken all that careful work!”

Rolf-Göran Bengtsson (SWE) was almost a second slower to take the runner-up spot. Luciana Diniz (POR) was third, while Maikel van der Vleuten (NED) placed fourth.

Luciana’s result extends her lead on the GCT ranking table. She is now on 160 points, and a full 50 points ahead of her nearest rival Pius Schwizer with 110 points, while Scott Brash is third on 105.

‘Good for Britain’

The rest of the week saw Ben Maher, Scott Brash and John Whitaker battling it out for the top spots.

Scott won the 1.50m Prix FFE French Tour Generali, leaving three seconds between him and second placed Julien Epaillard (FRA). Ben took an early lead with Aristo Z (65.63sec), but was beaten by John on Argento (64.62sec).

It was then Scott’s turn at the top of leaderboard, when he delivered a scorching round with Hello Annie (61.18sec), which couldn’t be beaten.

John ended up in third place, while Ben came fifth behind Ali Yousef Al Rumaihi (QUA).

“Hello Annie was fantastic here tonight,” said Scott. “It’s great to see the Brits do well – John rode a great round, as did Ben. His horse has been off for a while so it’s good to see him back, and this result is very good for Britain.”

Great result

The following evening, it was Ben’s turn to take the lead, with Scott having to settle for second place.

With six clears in the jump-off, from the world’s best riders, it was a great result for British showjumping.

Scott and Hello Annie set the bar with a typically, fast and accurate round (33.77sec). However Ben and Aristo Z, who were last to go, managed to shave one second off their time to win the class (32.76sec).

Christian Ahlmann(GER) and Pénélope Leprévost were joint third with identical jump-off times (33.83sec).

Bertram Allen was fourth with Quiet Easy 4,ahead of Rodrigo Pessoa (BRA) and Status.