Big wins for Carl Hester in Vidauban

Carl Hester enjoyed a successful trip to the CDI3* at Vidauban in the south of France, winning three of his four big tour classes.

He rode Aram Gregory’s Dances With Wolves to victory in the grand prix special on Sunday (3 March) with 74.4%, ahead of Spain’s Beatriz Ferrer-Salat and Delgado.

This reversed the order of the grand prix (1 March), in which the 11-year-old Oldenburg gelding — in his first international test at this level — was second to Delgado.

Carl tweeted that “Golly”, who stands 17.3hh, was “hotter than a boiling kettle, but managed to keep a lid on it”.

“Tres heureux!” he added.

And Carl won both the grand prix and the freestyle (1 and 2 March) on Jenny Green’s stallion, Fine Time. He is riding the 12-year-old, known as “Bruno” for Gemma Appleton, who has just had her first child.

It was the horse’s first grand prix.

Full report from Vidaudan will be published in a future issue of Horse & Hound magazine

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