Third leg Round-Up from the FEI European Championships
Friday 25 August 2017
Tonight saw the third individual jumping qualifying round, and the final team round, at the Longines FEI European Championships in Gothenburg. Under the lights of the Ullevi Stadium, Great Britain’s William Whitaker with Ludwig Criel’s Utamaro d Ecaussines were one of the early combinations into the arena.
With the striking thirteen-year-old bay stallion, William produced a good round, but had an unfortunate pole down at fence three, which upset their rhythm into fence four, with the final part of that combination also falling. After the two early fences, the rest of the round was faultless and they were unlucky to see two time penalties added, to finish on a total score of 15.06 penalties, for 26th place.
Commenting afterwards, William said: “I’m pleased with him. It’s a tough course, and it’s the first time we’ve jumped under the lights here. He jumped really good again – I’m not sure if he spooked a bit at fence three, but when we knocked it, it just broke my stride a bit. After that he jumped everything really well. You have to take some risks to try to get the time.
“I’m very pleased with the way my horse jumped; it’s just a bit frustrating, the way he’s jumping it feels like we should be a bit higher up the leaderboard than we are.”
Following today’s third qualifying round, and the culmination of the team event, the top 25 individual’s will go forward to contest Sunday’s individual final, after a further horse inspection tomorrow. In the team event, it was Ireland who clinched the team gold medal, with silver going to Sweden and Switzerland taking the bronze.
The British senior teams are supported by the BEF’s UK Sport National Lottery funded World Class Programme.
Full results from tonight's competition can be found online at: http://bit.ly/2wO42DV
