Defending Nations Cup champions win sixth leg

The Netherlands team won the sixth leg of the Furusiyya FEI Nations Cup in Falsterbo, Sweden (10 July).

Strong performance

The defending champions’ performance was so strong, they only needed to field three of their four riders, after Harrie Smolders, Maikel van der Vleuten and Leopold Van Asten all jumped double-clear. This left Gerco Schroder watching from the sidelines.

Competing on home turf, Sweden was joint second with Germany on four faults, ahead of Switzerland on 12.

Britain’s recent good form in the Nations Cup series took a dip, coming second-to-last behind the USA.

Eliminated

Things didn’t go well for the team from the off when pathfinder William Funnell was eliminated after his European gold-medal winning partner had two stops at the triple combination. William then withdrew Billy Congo from the second round.

Laura Renwick (Bintang ll)had four faults followed by eight, while Yazmin Pinchen (Ashkari)had twelve faults in the first round, but just one pole on their second attempt.

Michael Whitaker produced the only clear, riding two fault-free rounds with Calcourt Falklund. The team finished on a total of 28 points to come seventh out of eight nations.

Leaderboard

The Dutch win strengthens their position on the leaderboard and they are now in joint second place with Sweden on 295 points, behind France on 310.

Britain is seventh on 200 points, but has two point-scoring competitions yet to come at Hickstead later this month (31 July) and Dublin (7 August).