Britain’s Brash Brilliant at Chantilly CSI5*, but Smolders Steals Spotlight
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Published 18/07/2017 at 08:38 GMT
In recent years, the UK's Scott Brash has won more than €3 million on the Longines Global Champions Tour. And this weekend’s stage in Chantilly, France was another great one for the Scotland native, with a win and two second-place finishes. But Brash was upstaged at Chantilly by the Netherlands’ Harrie Smolders, who won the Grand Prix and helped move his team to the top of the GCL standings.
Britain’s Brash Brilliant at Chantilly CSI5*, but Smolders Steals Spotlight
Image credit: Eurosport
It was a challengin weekend for the elite Show Jumpers on Uliano Vezzani’s course beside the Chateau de Chantilly, including Great Britain’s John Whitaker, who was thrown head-over-heels from his 9-year-old stallion Cassinis Chaplin in Saturday’s €300,000 Grand Prix. Fortunately, the Olympian was quickly back up on his feet as his riderless partner ran around the ring in front of the capacity crowd.
In the end, four pairs out of 24 advanced from the first round into the Grand Prix jump-off, where three (Smolders, Brash and Philippe Rozier of France) again had clear rides. The final podium positions were thus determined by the combinations’ times: 41.63 seconds for Smolders’ first place, followed by Brash and Hello Forever (42.82) and Rozier and Rahotep de Toscane (44.80). The three top riders earned €99,000, €60,000 and €45,000 respectively.
“Hello Forever was amazing today,” Brash said afterwards. “I was just too slow in the last class! I must say you can’t take it away from Harrie Smolders, he did an amazing jump-off round, he was very fast.”
For his part, Smolders called his win in the Grand Prix and his Global Champions League (GCL) success with Hamburg Diamonds teammate Whitaker ‘amazing’: “I’m very pleased with Emerald and he deserves the credit for the results this week. He felt very good at home but it’s never a guarantee that it turns out like this.”
With the Chantilly victory, Smolders leads the 2017 Tour rankings after 10 of 15 competitions, with 247 points, followed in second by Italy’s Alberto Zorzi, who finished eighth in the Chantilly Grand Prix with Fair Light van T Heike (190 points), and Smolders’ Dutch compatriot Maikel van der Vleuten (185).
Reflecting on the 2017 season so far (the next stop is in Berlin from July 28-30), Jan Tops, Founder and President of the Longines Global Champions Tour, said: “I must say this year the changes we really like — to have the shorter Longines Global Champions Tour Grand Prix with 25 horses in it means it is a quicker class, with the League the qualifier for it.”
“I like to see the sport progress,” Tops added. “For example, every year we make sure everything is better and better — better conditions for the riders, horses and owners. We think it’s important for the sport that all stakeholders benefit, and we try to make sure that people outside of the sport can follow it as well.”
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