In Basel late this evening, the competition's best riders competed in the 1.60m Longines Grand Prix. A total of fourteen jump-off candidates was dominated by the lightning-fast Austrian Max Kühner aboard the ten-year-old Eic Cooley Jump the Q (Pacino).
As the tenth of fourteen jump-off candidates, Max Kühner took all the risks and rushed to an unbeatable time of 31.81 seconds. With this he did in the saddle of the Irish sport horse Eic Cooley Jump the Q half a second better than Christian Ahlmann, who had been in the lead until then. Just after Kühner, German Gerrit Nieberg also tried to do the same trick, although the 12-year-old Westphalia gelding Ben (Sylvain) crossed the finish line just 34 hundredths too slow for the gold. Fellow countryman Christian Ahlmann was thus relegated to third place with the supreme black stallion Dominator 2000 Z (Diamant de Semilly).
Yuri Mansur delivered the fourth fastest time by sending the 15-year-old chestnut gelding Vitiki (Valentino) around clear in 34.17 seconds. With a difference of just two hundredths, Denis Lynch finished fifth on the BWP gelding Brooklyn Heights (Nabab de Reve).
