Last year's individual winner at Fontainebleau - Michael Jung Photos: PSV J.Morel
The first in the new FEI Nations Cup series, the CICO 3* at Fontainebleau starts today (Thursday) near Paris in France.
The brand new six-leg series created by the FEI is open to all nations fielding one team composed of 3 or 4 riders at each leg and riders will accumulate points under a dedicated system created for the new series.
It seems that there is keen interest for the first leg of the series and from what we can deduce from the French website there are team entries from Australia, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and France. There are also individual entries from other countries.
In the CICO 3* Clayton Fredericks is listed as competing on Bendigo and Dunge’s Laurent Rosé, Lucinda Fredericks on Flying Finish and Wendy Schaeffer on Koyuna Sun Dancer. We spoke to Wendy last week who was really looking forward to the team competition - she will be one of the last riders in the dressage on Friday morning. Clayton also rides Bendigo in the dresage on Friday while the other two horses will be doing their dressage today
The competition will be stiff with Pippa Funnell, Rodney Powell and Sharon Hunt for GB, lots of top guns for the Germans to choose from including Andreas Dibowski, Frank Ostholt, Michael Jung (last year’s winner here) and Simone Dietermann and of course Nicolas Touzaint plus many others for the home French team.
The dressage phase for the CICO 3* starts at 9am (French time) today continuing through to lunchtime on Friday, the cross country on Saturday and showjumping on Sunday.
Clayton and Lucinda are also competing in the individual competition in the CIC 1*on Mr. Sydney Rocks (Clayton) and Shelter Cove (Lucinda)
We’ll keep you updated with all of the news as it comes through so stay tuned to find out how Australia goes at its first Nations Cup Eventing team competition!
