Penélope Leprevost wins the Suzuki Grand Prix

Show Jumping News :: Everything Horse

It’s the last day of the XXVI Sunshine Tour and it sure lived up to its name. The very difficult situation surrounding the coronavirus CORVID-19 pandemic has led to the early closure of the Tour in order to protect the riders and everyone involved in the event. Yesterday the Tour announced that this would be the last day of jumping.

Over the course of the day there were numerous classes including the Grand Prix, sponsored by Suzuki. The French anthem sounded out for the winner, the Olympic rider Penélope Leprevost and her marvellous horse Vancouver de Lanlore. There were 17 riders through to the jump off and in second place was Guido Klatte with Qinghai. Guido really has had an excellent Tour this year and deserved his placing after a superb round. Third was the Brazilian rider Stephan Barcha with Artois D’Avillon. This rider was part of his home team in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

The amazing young Irish rider, Jason Foley was once again at the top of the podium in the 1.45m class sponsored by Marqués de Riscal. This time he was riding the lovely grey, Castlefield Vegas. This class had a large number in the jump off with 24 of the 90 entrants going through. The course was designed by Marcos Nuñez in the expansive grass arena, Hicksted. Jason beat the Polish rider Andrzej Oplatek by a few hundredths of a second. Andrzej was riding Stakkatan who was born and raised in the stables of the renown Paul Schockemöhle. This was not his only good result today here at Montenmedio. The British rider, Charlie Jones took third place.

Jason Foley was also amongst the top three in the Big Tour B riding  Castlefield Cass. He came in second, just behind the Canadian rider , Kara Chad the winner of the class with Firefly W. Third was the Spanish rider Kevin González de Zárate. He also took third place riding Ragga Muffin in the 1.35m Big Tour class. The winner of this class was the Brazilian rider Carlos Eduardo Mota Ribas riding Kartouzo Van’T Kathof. Second place was taken by the Italian rider Michael Cristofoletti with Udsturm du Lys.

The Big Tour 1.30m class was small with only 12 riders but it was a competitive class and was won by Jude Burgess and Ivascalle with Juan Carlos Pérez Resendi and Tim Wilks taking second and third resp’.

And so the tour ended, with record numbers of participants and over 2,500 horses competing. The team commented

We would like to thank everyone involved for all their hard work and happy faces and wish them all a very safe trip home”