Saudi, French riders shine on GCT’s final day
Print Edition
SAUDI Arabian and French riders took the last two titles as the curtain fell on the inaugural Global Champions Tour Shanghai Grand Prix yesterday.
The three-day event offered many local fans their first taste of show jumping. The Shanghai leg will stay in the five-star event’s calendar for at least another two years, with organizers looking for long-term cooperation with GCT.
Abdullah al-Sharbatly of Saudi Arabia rode a daring round with his 13-year-old gelding Unique en route to a first-place finish in Class 5 1.45/1.5 meters in the morning, a 1.5-second advantage over Irish Shane Breen and his horse Confident of Victory. Constant van Paesschen of Belgium, riding Citizenguard Million Dreams, placed third.
In the last staged Class 6 1.5/ 1.55m, 2009 European champion Kevin Staut of France and his Oh d’Eole performed a faultless jump-off round
Qatar riders, Bassem Hassan Mohammed, on Primeval Dejavu, and Sheikh Ali bin Khalid al-Thani, on Vienna Olympic, placed second and third.
Awkward distances and tough lines resulted in many four faults in the first round. Errors were concentrated through the tricky combination distances in the middle and the end of the course. Twelve out of 31 starters made it through to the jump-off.
Six riders jumped double clears. After seeing a profound performance from the two Qataris, Staut, from a strong position late in the draw, shaved half a second off the leading time to claim his first big result from the final class of the Shanghai event.
“The hard work is done. We’ve built a system to maintain,” said Jan Tops, president and founder of GCT.
The 4,000-seat arena in front of the China Art Museum in Pudong was put up in a matter of months. The organizer, Juss Event, hopes to keep the event in Shanghai for the long haul.
“We have been preparing for this for years, and the outcome has been worth it,” said Jiang Lan, manager of Juss Event.
World class events
Riders also agreed that world class events should be held in China as the first step to make equestrian popular.
“More top class events should come to China. We can also set up training clinics in Europe and have children trained there,” Edwina Tops-Alexander suggested. The Australian was the runner-up in Saturday’s 1.6m class.
Veteran rider Ludger Beerbaum, nicknamed “godfather of equestrian” in China, had a bigger say on the matter. The German, appointed head coach of the Chinese team in 2006, guided six riders at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, though the equestrian events were held in Hong Kong. It was China’s first participation in Olympic equestrian.
“To raise the level of Chinese riders will require time,” Beerbaum said. “More riders should compete in higher level competitions. In the past 4-5 years, the number of Chinese riders has increased from 10 to about 40. Some of them will become ‘high level’ riders in another 3-4 years. But to reach the ‘top level’, we still have to wait. In equestrian, history is also involved. We can’t do it in just a few years’ time.”
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