Overnight leaders Laura Collett and London 52 make us all feel something again, even at 8 in the morning on three hours of sleep. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
We’re neither bright-eyed nor bushy-tailed on this final (early) morning of the Agria FEI European Eventing Championships, but fortunately for morale and word count, we have practically nothing at all to report from the final horse inspection.
41 horses and riders came forward to present to the ground jury of Sandy Phillips, Katrin Eichinger-Kniely, and Valerie Pride — down by one from the end of yesterday’s competition, owing to the withdrawal of Italy’s Giovanni Ugolotti and Duke of Champions. They’d acted as pathfinders for the Italian team, and had a mixed bag of fortunes on course: they picked up a flag penalty at fence 10BC, the second of the angled brushes in the main arena, and a MIM activation penalty at 16, the ha-ha oxer after the rollercoaster complex, putting them into 32nd place individually and helping contribute to Italy’s overnight sixth place as a team.
Unfortunately, this withdrawal does mean that Italy now drops out of any meaningful hunt for a placing. After the retirement of Arianna Schivo and First Lady de Belheme, all three remaining finishers’ scores had to count, and Giovanni’s withdrawal will mean they need to count his 1000-point non-completion penalty. There are now five teams truly remaining in the team competition: Germany maintains their nine-and-a-bit rail lead ahead of Ireland in silver position and Switzerland in bronze, while the French are close behind in fourth and Austria sits 16.6 penalties, or just over four rails, behind them in fifth.
Germany’s Calvin Böckmann and The Phantom of the Opera, who delivered the fastest round of the day yesterday and sit in fourth overnight. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Otherwise, everyone who came forward was accepted without a second glance, including our overnight leaders, Laura Collett and London 52, who take a scant 1.7 penalty margin over Michael Jung and fischerChipmunk FRH into today’s showjumping. That’ll begin with the first session at 11.00 a.m. (12.00 p.m. CEST/6.00 a.m. EST), and the second session — which photographer Peter Nixon tells me is “the top twenty, I think” — will commence from 14.00 BST (15.00 CEST/9.00 a.m. EST). We’ll be back once this pony show wraps up to bring you the full story of our new European Champions and the battle they undertook to nab themselves their medals.
In the meantime, you can catch up on all the action — no, literally, all of it — with our full cross-country report and, of course, Cheg’s fantastic live updates blog, which charts the fates and fortunes of each and every starter on Captain Mark Phillips’ influential track yesterday. You can also rewatch the whole competition, and tune in live for today’s finale, on ClipMyHorse.TV — or, if you’re in the UK, on the BBC’s Red Button service, which will show today’s jumping live.
Go Eventing!
The individual leaderboard at the end of cross-country.
EN is proud to welcome Horsepal onboard as the sponsor of our European Championships coverage! Horsepal is a newly-launched heart rate monitor brought to you by Tom MacGuinness, founder of Horseware and an FEI eventer and endurance rider, who’s brought his decades of knowledge to practice in the design of Horsepal. You can now purchase Horsepal directly to the UK and Europe — learn more here.
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