There were just 18 fault-free rounds posted from 91 attempts today, after the field thinned by two overnight with the withdrawal of Italy’s Alberto Guigni and his two rides. Even those riders who would leave the poles in their cups — not an easy proposition on its own — would struggle to cross the line within the time allowed, much to the commentator’s mixed delight and heartbreak. (“Ooh la la, Jonelle, look at the time, LOOK AT THE TIME, JONELLE,” he wailed at the culmination of one of the Kiwi’s perfectly respectable rounds, in which she added a tiny 0.8 time penalties to her score, thoroughly destroying our main man with the microphone in the process. Oddly, he managed to hold it together when poor Pawel Spisak and Banderas came to grief at fence three, missing their distance and booking themselves in for a hasty meet-and-greet with the footing.)
The relative sparseness of these fault-free rounds meant that anyone who managed to produce one would generally guarantee themselves a halving of their leaderboard place — from sitting in the 70s or 60s after dressage to striding into the high-20s to high-30s after this pivotal phase. Further up the leaderboard, the halving effect was much the same — and a proclivity for pole-popping would prove essential.
Dressage leaders Michael Jung and fischerChipmunk FRH (yes, we know that’s Rocana in the image above) have plenty going for them, as we discussed in yesterday’s report — they’re a formidable duo in the first phase, leaving nary a mark on the table, and they’re reliable and quick across the country. But if they have a weakness — and almost unfathomably, they do — it’s the showjumping, which has never come wholly naturally to the horse, despite a 2016 season in which he never had a single rail. Were it not for a rail, he’d have won Blenheim CCI4*-L in 2017 and the European Championships and Aachen last year, and it’s this nail-biting will-he-or-won’t-he factor that could likely end up playing one of the biggest roles in the Tokyo story next year.
Today, the balance teetered the wrong way, and Michael and Chipmunk would pull two rails, totting up an extra 1.2 time penalties in the process. This sees them drop down to fifth place going into tomorrow’s cross-country — not out of the hunt, certainly, but with no choice but to get the job done if they want to try to snatch the title back.
Their errors opened the door for the on-form French team leaders Thibaut Vallette and Qing du Briot IFCE and Tom Carlile and Birmane to move from equal fifth to equal first on the strength of their fluid, easy rounds, keeping their team well in the lead on the Nations Cup leaderboard, too.
Seeing these two combinations lead the way feels telling, somehow. After all, the postponement of the Games until 2021 isn’t, necessarily, a bad thing for every country — and the French, after selling some of their top horsepower to the hungry Japanese team, have spent the last couple of years rebuilding and developing a string of exciting young horses, bolstered by the efforts of a handful of stalwart team campaigners. Dapper Cadre Noir rider Thibaut and his now-16-year-old Selle Français gelding are among those stalwarts; they’ve been to five championships for France, finishing in the top ten in four of them and just outside in individual 13th at the Rio Olympics, where they helped their team to the gold. Though they’ve had their occasional wobbles in competition, they’re at their very best when riding for their country, and when we look at the ‘old guard’ of the current French advance, they’re at the forefront.
Consider, then, Tom Carlile and Birmane, who represent the other half of the prospective French line-up for 2021. Birmane first made a name for herself while storming around the Six-Year-Old World Championships for bronze in 2017, winning her debut CCI3*-S here the following year, and stepping up to finish 10th at her very first CCI4*-L at Boekelo last season. She’s only nine this year, and will be a green nine-year-old at that, having missed much of the season due to the pandemic, but Tom — who’s earned himself a reputation as one of the world’s best producers of young horses, and whose dreams of further team glories may have felt somewhat dampened by the untimely retirement of his top horse, Upsilon — is wasting no time. Birmane came out last month for her first international of 2020 at Jardy, where she won the CCI4*-S in fine fashion.
In lieu of a photographer, EN opted to hire a courtroom artist to cover Haras du Pin for us this year. They sent us back this quick sketch of Tom Carlile in the collecting ring, watching Michi’s second rail fall. Heels down, Thomas, that’s all we’ve got to say about the matter.
Today, she popped around the tough showjumping track in what’s becoming her signature style — a sort of louche Gallicness, in which she coasts swanlike around the ring, casually finds her way to the base of the fence without a care in the world, and then springs, catlike, as though she’s laughing at you for ever thinking she’d clocked off early. She’s becoming more formidable every year, and the young horses behind her in France’s string — including Astier Nicolas’s Babylon de Gamma and Mathieu Lemoine’s Tzinga d’Ausay — could pose a significant threat in Tokyo after being granted an extra year to grow into themselves.
Speaking of threatening entities, Australia’s Chris Burton has so many horses qualified for Tokyo that I think I might have run out of fingers to count them on by now. Today, he showed off the mettle of yet another exciting member of his string, the Holsteiner gelding Jefferson 18. Chris took the ride early last year from Germany’s Adam Liedermann, who had given Jefferson his first international season. Though Chris focused much of the horse’s time and attention on showjumping in their inaugural year together, they recorded some promising results out eventing, too, finishing in the top five at two-stars at Chatsworth and Saumur and a CCI3*-L at Lignieres. In this, the horse’s first CCI4*-S, the overall impression so far has been of a horse with a year’s more experience than he actually has — he posted a 27.5 in the first phase to sit eighth, and added just 0.4 time penalties today to move up to third. We wouldn’t put it past Burto — who is, you know, rather quick across the country — to merrily win the whole thing tomorrow on a horse who’s never seen a course of this intensity.
Sitting just ahead of the deposed Michi and Chipmunk is the Netherlands’ Tim Lips, who produced a double-clear showjumping round aboard Eclips to move from 11th place to fourth overnight. This is the horse’s third visit to the event, and so far, the trajectory looks promising — he finished 38th in 2018 after adding 8.4 cross-country time penalties to a 31.7 dressage and 9th in 2019 when he trimmed that down to 4.4 time penalties and a 31. This week, he’s stepped up a considerable notch from his average score at this level to post a 28.5 — now, all that remains to be seen is whether he can be quick enough tomorrow. 3.6 time penalties at Strzegom last month suggests he could be on the right track — and after a heartbreaking 2019, in which the Netherlands lost out on a spot at Tokyo and Tim bade a sad goodbye to his top horse Bayro, he’ll likely be hungry to turn his luck around.
France remains well in the lead in the Nations Cup competition, sitting pretty on an unchanged aggregate score of 84.2 after all four members produced faultless rounds today. Their closest competition is the British team on 96.9, still led by the impressive efforts of Richard Coney and Kananaskis, who added just 0.4 time penalties. The Netherlands slips into third on 98.6, while Australia, on 106.8, will have a big job around tomorrow’s course to nab themselves a podium position.
Cross-country commences tomorrow morning at 9.00 local time — that’s 8.00 a.m. BST or 3.00 a.m. Eastern time, if you’re feeling really committed. Once again, you’ll be able to follow along with the free live-stream, available through the event’s Facebook page. In the meantime, if you want to rewatch today’s jumping, you can do so here.
Until then: À demain et aller au concours complet!
The top five after two phases.
Haras du Pin CCIO4*-S: Individual Leaderboard | Team Leaderboard | Live-Stream | Cross-Country Start List | Cross-Country Map
