Sunshine Tour CSI3* Competition Sees in Wins for Leading Riders

Sunshine Tour 2020: Michael Duffy collecting the Pavo Trophy. ®Moises Basallote

Sunshine Tour CSI3* Competition Sees in Wins for Leading Riders

Show Jumping News :: Everything Horse

CSI3* Sunshine Tour competition had a collective of 836 horses on the start lists on Friday. The highlight of the day was the 1.50m, Big Tour that was sponsored by Pavo, the equine feed specialists

The class had a lot of competitors and was finally won by the Irish rider Michael Duffy. Michael is 26yrs old and was the youngest rider to ever win the Irish National Championships. He has already represented his country internationally, including in Nations Cup rounds. Today he was riding his own Jeff Ten Halven an 11yr old gelding that he has been competing on for the last 2 months.

The French rider Max Thirouin continues to have great success here at Montenmedio and today he was second riding Utopie Villelongue. In third place was another Irish rider, Alexander Butler riding Quick Hamlet and in fourth was the newly arrived British rider Holly Smith on Graham Smith’s Heart’s Destiny.

In the 1.45m Big Tour, the winner was Marcelo Chirico from Uruguay, with QH Baloudarc LF. The Chilean rider Agustín Covarrubias came top of the 1.40m and in the 1.35m, Bernardo Cardoso de Resende from Brazil, was the winner by more than 4sec with Mombay, in this accumulator class. The well known Spanish rider Rutherford Latham had a super round and came 4th on the 8yr old Cash du Rozel. The 1.30m Big Tour class was won by Portuguese rider Rodrigo Sampaio.

The Médium Tour was dominated by riders from three countries, Great Britain Spain and Belgium.

Jessica Hewitt won the 1.40m with Hot Bluebird, in a class with 91 competitors sponsored by Cadena Ser. The Spanish won the 1.35m in a testing class with 112 entries, that was held in the Deister arena. Fidel Dávila,a rider for the Yeguada Finca Maeza, riding the experienced Chantre 34 beat off two Belgium riders, Bart Clarys and Luis Felipe de Azevedo who took 2nd and 3rd resp’.

The swift British rider Kayleigh Watts riding Arko’s Girl Z has once again won a class in fine style. This time she had 4 seconds in hand over other Brit, Scott Dollemore. The class was a very competitive 1.25-1.30m class where the optimum time was extremely tight. The Belgian rider Stephanie Falisse was third with Feoniki GB.

In the Small Tour there were more British victories, Kyle Bedford and Sophie Holliday were winners of the 1.10 and the 1.15m with Princess of Mónaco and Westerhofs Limit, respectively and in the 1.25-1.30m that had 81 entries, Jason Foley was the winner with Castlefield Sapphire.