Michael Whitaker’s bar room premonition of Aachen victory
Michael Whitaker was so confident that he and GIG Amai would win the Aachen Grand Prix on Sunday that the night before the class he wrote his name on the winner’s plaque – with a marker pen.
Aachen spokesman Niels Knippertz revealed that “after a few beers” the 52-year-old rider announced: “I am not going to stop riding, until my name is on the winners’ board.”
And then scrawled his name across the plaque – though why he put his horse down as Totilas is anyone’s guess!
But his premonition was correct and Michael and Beatrice Mertens’ 12-year-old Belgian gelding, GIG Amai were the winners of the €350,000 class.
The pair have now been nominated as non-travelling reserves for the British Olympic showjumping team in Greenwich.
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A self-confessed newshound, farmer’s daughter and journalist of many years' experience, Charlotte worked on regional papers before joining H&H in 2007. A regular rider, she visited Ireland in 2010 to investigate the fate of Irish horses through the recession, to much acclaim, and reported from the FEI General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro in 2011. She left Horse & Hound in March 2013.