‘She’s sensitive, but sometimes she pays all the work back’: grey mare scores her first London win

Grey mare Calanda 42 scored her first win on her fifth visit to the British Christmas show when she won the feature class of this afternoon’s London Horse Show showjumping, the snowflake stakes.

She and Marcus Ehning were the penultimate starters in the jump-off, by virtue of their fast first-round clear, and in the final barrage the German star was able to combine tight turns with a flowing round on Maren Schmitt-Nolte’s beautiful 14-year-old, finishing in 33.01sec, nearly a second ahead of the field.

“I know she’s a fast horse and I was a bit angry that I missed it in the jump-off yesterday,” said Marcus referring to the pair’s fence down in the jump-off of the Champagne-Taittinger ivy stakes. “But today it was good, so I’m very happy.

“She has a lot of experience – she’s jumped a few five-star grand prix and been here in London many times, but this is her first win here. She’s very delicate to ride, very tense, very sensitive but sometimes she pays all the work back. She’s spooky and still young in the mind.”

Ten went through to round two in this London Horse Show showjumping class and course-designer Bernardo Costa Cabral judged the course perfectly when it yielded 10 fault-free performances, though Kevin Staut elected not to jump Cheppetta again.

Faults in the first round were generally concentrated at the grey and black treble at fence five, at the airy red and gold double close to the crowd at fence seven and at the blue and white oxer at fence 10.

In the showdown, Matt Sampson set the standard as the first to go, steering Django Blue home in 34.31sec. He was beaten by the third in, Belgian’s Jos Veerloy on Varoune, who finished in 34.01sec.

For a while it looked like no one would get close to the leading pair – Guy Williams had 7a down on Crispina Z, young Brit Jodie Hall McAteer (Hardessa) and the 22-year-old Dutch rider Lars Kersten (Hallilea) slotted in just behind Matt, and William Funnell put in a competitive round without pushing the inexperienced Equine America Billy Marmite for eventual sixth.

Once Marcus had laid down his challenge, only Italian Lorenzo De Luca could beat him. He gave it everything, with the feisty nine-year-old mare Dirka De Blondel skimming across the ground, and looked to have won it easily – but the back rail came down on the final oxer, denying him victory despite a time more than a second faster than Marcus’s.

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