Maikel van der Vleuten and VDL Groep Verdi won the Longines Global Champions Tour of Madrid Grand Prix in spectacular style this evening with three beautiful clear rounds at Club de Campo Villa. Second place went to Marcus Ehning and Plot Blue. Third was fan-favourite Gerco Schröder and Glock's London. The intense high-quality sport seen today sets the scene for an electrifying contest between the titans of show jumping over the next few rounds, as the tour moves to Hamburg and the ground-breaking event in Shanghai in early June. Millions have watched Madrid on TV and online, and over 20,000 spectators have flocked to the stunning venue during the show. Similar to the first round, Santiago Varela's second didn't leave much of a field left from the eleven clears that went through as part of the top 18. There were clears from a few of the fastest four-faulters like Ben Maher, Doda de Miranda and Sergio Alvarez Moya. As first, it looked like there would be no double clears at all, as another tight time allowed saw Gerco Shröder and Glock's London and pick up an excrutiating time fault, as did Edwina Tops-Alexander.
But freshly crowned Dutch Champion van der Vleuten and VDL Groep Verdi made the tricky course look easy and the experienced combination of Marcus Ehning and Plot Blue produced a stylish round, like only Ehning can do, to give a two-horse jump-off.
Marcus Ehning was first to go in the deciding round and chose to take care over speed to go clear. Nest up was Van der Vleuten that had the advantage of seeing Ehining ride and could see exactly where he needed to make up time and executed a stunning performance, taking his first ever win in the Global Champions Tour.
"I knew it was not going to be easy. It is not so easy to ride a jump-off against Marcus, he has so much experience and he had a very good jump-off, but my horse gave me the feeling today that I could go for it. The jump-off went the way I planned and it was enough to win today. I was lucky I was last to go - I knew where I could win - the second to last turn-back to the oxer I could let him go to the last fence and win the time." , Maikel responded at the press conference. Check out the results and video's of the GCT Grand Prix Madrid here. source: GCT