On Thursday the British team jumped to victory in the Nations Cup finals qualifier. Spanish course designer Santiago Varela gave them lots to think about with a 1fence track with plenty of height and curving lines that tested power and accuracy.
Harry Charles clinched top spot for the British with a superb clear with the 12-year-old mare Aralyn Blue. Talking about the challenges of the course he said fence nine, which followed the beefy Longines triple combination, “was on an unusual line and angle, you were coming straight out of the corner. You could see at the start of the class the horses weren’t jumping it well. I just made sure to give myself a bit more room there."
“Coming to the double of verticals (fence 13) it was either five or six (strides) and on the six you take away a bit of the power, slowing down so much to jump it. For me it was a waiting five and my mare was able to have a bit of room and kept the power, so not too many problems there for me”, he explained.
Like all the British he was delighted with today’s result. “I’m really proud of us today actually!”, he said. “My horse is pretty new at this level, she’s only done one Nations Cup prior to this and it was a tough enough course, not overly big but delicate with some fun lines in there! The other guys did a good job, there were two clears already (for the British team) so I luckily could go in and do the clear”.
Asked if he felt under pressure he replied “today probably wasn’t the most pressure I’ve ridden under but we wanted to be in there on Sunday so there was that to it”. And he admitted that the result for his team was a bit of a surprise.
“Probably an unexpected result if you told us at the start of the day, but we’ll take it and hopefully we can do something similar on Sunday! We will go back to a blank slate unfortunately (in Sunday’s final round), it would be nice if we carried it through, but it’s been really good and hopefully we will be in good enough nick for Sunday”, he added.
Anticipation
There’s a lot of anticipation of a great final day. The Swiss have never won the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ title but their fourth place finish today gives them another opportunity to clinch it. However it hasn’t been plain sailing ahead of this year’s event.
“We’ve always been a bit unlucky with this Final, and this year the horse from Edouard is injured and Bryan (Balsiger) lost his horses and the horse of Pius (Schwizer) was injured so we don’t have our “A” team. But still our horses jumped good today and we’ll see if Elian (Baumann) goes on Sunday. We won’t be the favourites on Sunday but we’ll try!”, said Steve Guerdat who, just a few short weeks ago, added the individual European title to the Olympic gold he won back in 2012.
“We’ve had a very good year and it would be a great way to finish, and for the horses to finish as well. My horse didn’t have a rail down in the whole Nations Cup season - St Gallen double-clear, Aachen double-clear, Dublin double-clear and now clear today so I hope I can do a clear again! We are here, we will try, the sport is great and we are looking forward to Sunday now!”, said the man who sits third in the current world rankings.
source Press Release FEI
Harry Charles clinched top spot for the British with a superb clear with the 12-year-old mare Aralyn Blue. Talking about the challenges of the course he said fence nine, which followed the beefy Longines triple combination, “was on an unusual line and angle, you were coming straight out of the corner. You could see at the start of the class the horses weren’t jumping it well. I just made sure to give myself a bit more room there."
“Coming to the double of verticals (fence 13) it was either five or six (strides) and on the six you take away a bit of the power, slowing down so much to jump it. For me it was a waiting five and my mare was able to have a bit of room and kept the power, so not too many problems there for me”, he explained.
Like all the British he was delighted with today’s result. “I’m really proud of us today actually!”, he said. “My horse is pretty new at this level, she’s only done one Nations Cup prior to this and it was a tough enough course, not overly big but delicate with some fun lines in there! The other guys did a good job, there were two clears already (for the British team) so I luckily could go in and do the clear”.
Asked if he felt under pressure he replied “today probably wasn’t the most pressure I’ve ridden under but we wanted to be in there on Sunday so there was that to it”. And he admitted that the result for his team was a bit of a surprise.
“Probably an unexpected result if you told us at the start of the day, but we’ll take it and hopefully we can do something similar on Sunday! We will go back to a blank slate unfortunately (in Sunday’s final round), it would be nice if we carried it through, but it’s been really good and hopefully we will be in good enough nick for Sunday”, he added.
Anticipation
There’s a lot of anticipation of a great final day. The Swiss have never won the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ title but their fourth place finish today gives them another opportunity to clinch it. However it hasn’t been plain sailing ahead of this year’s event.
“We’ve always been a bit unlucky with this Final, and this year the horse from Edouard is injured and Bryan (Balsiger) lost his horses and the horse of Pius (Schwizer) was injured so we don’t have our “A” team. But still our horses jumped good today and we’ll see if Elian (Baumann) goes on Sunday. We won’t be the favourites on Sunday but we’ll try!”, said Steve Guerdat who, just a few short weeks ago, added the individual European title to the Olympic gold he won back in 2012.
“We’ve had a very good year and it would be a great way to finish, and for the horses to finish as well. My horse didn’t have a rail down in the whole Nations Cup season - St Gallen double-clear, Aachen double-clear, Dublin double-clear and now clear today so I hope I can do a clear again! We are here, we will try, the sport is great and we are looking forward to Sunday now!”, said the man who sits third in the current world rankings.
source Press Release FEI