ROB WHITAKER & CATWALK IV SHINE IN SPAIN
Monday 21 March 2016
As the FEI CSI 3* Sunshine Tour drew to a close in Spain, it was a Union Flag that topped the winners line-up in the 1.60m Final Grand Prix when Rob Whitaker and Mandy Hall’s 13 year-old bay gelding Catwalk IV took the title.
Seven combinations had made it through to the jump-off with both Rob from Sidcup in Kent and Tim Wilks from Henley on Thames in Oxford being two of them. The jump off was a particularly hard fought one with all seven riders putting in fast times but only only four of them, including Rob and Tim, that managed to produce a further clear.
It was Rob though that delivered the round of the competition with absolute precision to take the lead by some 62/100th of a second ahead of Belgium’s Jerome Guery with Grand Cru vd Rozenbne and Fabienne Lange Daigneux with Venue d’Fee des Hazalles who finished in 2nd and 3rd place respectively.
Tim Wilks with Quelbora Merze, took 4th place as the slightly slowest of the four that jumped double clear. Remarkably, his time was just over two seconds behind Rob which only serves to illustrate how hard the jump off was ridden by all of those coming through.
Talking after the results Di Lampard, World Class Showjumping Performance Manager commented “I am delighted with Rob’s result today. He has focused on the Final Grand Prix as his core objective the entire way through the Sunshine Tour. He has ridden well throughout the tour and Catwalk has been going incredibly well. To see it all come together in the way that Rob had planned it is superb and I couldn’t be happier with the way both of them are going”.
For more information and full results please visit www.sunshinetour.net
