There were 70 entries in the $35,000 Bainbridge 1.45m Jumper class, but not one of them could catch the time of Santiago Lambre and D’Artagnan, who went first in the class and set the unbeatable time of 58.79 seconds over the speed course designed by Michel Vaillancourt of Canada.
Molly Ashe (USA) and Picobello Choppin Z, owned by Louisburg Farm, came closest in 60.02 seconds for second place. Third place went to Karen Polle (JPN) and her own Little Lord 90, who had a time of 60.33 seconds.
“He can go really fast,” said Lambre of the 10-year-old KWPN gelding by Mr. Blue x Carthago he has ridden for a year. “You have to go really all or nothing here. You can’t waste time. If you go one stride more in one turn, for sure you won’t win. Sometimes in those classes you just have to try to do anything. If you don’t, you finish sixth, which happened with him twice this year. Today I tried to go faster than usual.”
Lambre found D’Artagnan in Holland where the horse was competing with an amateur rider.
“He’s a bit hot, so he’s not so easy to sell,” said Lambre. “So I bought him! He’s not an amateur horse.”
Lambre moved to the United States last year after living in Belgium for ten years, and he has found that WEF is an “amazing place” to bring along horses.
“The horses learn a lot here,” he said. “You can have a green horse, and after 12 weeks here you have a horse ready to go to the shows. I have a horse who arrived to WEF one month ago jumping 1.40m and last week he jumped in the five-star. [WEF is] really good to produce a horse.”