Laura Collett and London 52
“Second is good but it’s not like winning! But this horse deserves it”
Laura Collett had jumped a clear round in the final phase at Boekelo on board London 52, finishing on her dressage score of 26 and, as she watched the past World Champion Sandra Auffarth jumping on Let’s Dance, a horse that has not had a rail down in international competition since 2016, she was convinced that Sandra would take the Boekelo title and that she would be second for the second year in a row
But, as Bettina Hoy said this week, it isn’t over until the fat lady sings and, on this occasion, she sang out strong and loud against her home country* and for Britain’s Laura Collett who was sitting on the fence watching the last competitor
“I never thought that horse (Let’s Dance) would have a rail because he was jumping amazingly. I looked away for a second and Camilla (Speirs), sitting next to me, suddenly grabbed me and I nearly fell off the fence. I couldn’t believe it!”
It has been a rocky road this year for London 52 but Laura must really be looking forward to 2020 with not only this talented 10 year old owned by Karen Bartlett, Keith Scott and herself, but with her whole team of horses
Chris Burton and Clever Louis
Laura and Australia’s Chris Burton had been neck and neck the whole way, both finishing with a clear jumping round on a score of 26, but Chris was in fact the one who had to accept that ‘second is good’. Just 0.02 time penalties separated them on cross country, with Chris coming in on 9:57 and Laura on 9:59, closer to the optimum time of 10 minutes, securing Laura the win but Chris has the added bonus of gaining an Olympic qualification on his new ride, Clever Louis at just their second competition together
Michael Jung and fischerRocana are back in business
Three riders in the top six were on relatively new rides with Michael Jung’s Creevagh Cooley, a horse he only started to ride in May, taking third place (28.6) and Sandra Auffarth dropping down to fourth place with her new horse Let’s Dance 73.
Michael took fifth place on his more experienced fischerRocana FST, who also had one rail down and Japan’s Kazuma Tomoto took sixth place on Bernadette Utopia
Sandra may have lost her winning spot in the individual competition but Germany once again proved dominant in the FEI Nations Cup competition, winning the final leg of the 2019 Series and making it four wins from four starts this year while Sweden that took the overall Series win
We’ll have more to come from Boekelo very soon ……..
* Did you know? The "fat lady" idiom comes from opera and refers to the buxom valkyrie Brünnhilde, of Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and particularly its last part, Götterdämmerung when she brings the opera to its end. Now used particularly in sport to denote that you never what the final outcome is until its over, the fat lady should be a mascot for this sport!
The German team do it again - winning the final leg of the 2019 Nations Cup Series at Boekelo
