Brits win medals at World Breeding finals

British riders held their own at the FEI World Breeding Eventing Championships for Young Horses inFrance, winning silver and two bronze medals.

Brilliant test

Tom McEwan and Toledo de Kerse won silver in the Seven-Year-Old Championship, finishingon their dressage score of 43.70pen, while Laura Collett won bronze (46.20pen).

Laura was 11th after the dressage, but with nothing to add she moved up the leaderboard into third place with Pamero.

At the beginning of the competition it looked like Nicolas Touzaint was the one to beat, following a brilliant test which was awarded 34.0pen. However, he was eliminated on the cross-country when Caretinhus put in three stops.

Double win

This left the door wide open for fellow Frenchman Thomas Carlile and the 2013 six-year-old champion Tenareze. He put in a great performance with theFrench Anglo-Arab to achieve back-to-back wins.

In the Six-Year-Old Championship, arefusal on the cross-country also saw Belgium’s Vincent Martens lose his grip on the title. He was in the lead after the dressage, just in front of Michael Jung.

Keeping a cool head as always, Michael rode fault-free rounds in the cross-country and showjumping to win the class with Star Connection (42.70pen). Australia’s Chris Barton was hot on his heels to take silver (44.40pen) riding Dutch Man Retto.

Costly penalties

Zoe Wilkinson was in third place going into the final phase with the AES-bred Parkfield Quintessential. She jumped clear but incurred two costly time penalties, which saw her drop her down to sixth.

This meant bronze went to Piggy French with the Irish-bred Cooley Dream Extreme (47.10pen).