Irish showjumper Mikey Pender achieved one the most important wins of his profession up to now when taking the €300,000 five-star Longines Grand Prix in Barcelona on Friday evening.
The occasion, a part of the League Of Nations Remaining, noticed the 25-year-old Kildare rider associate the Irish Sport Horse HHS Calais – bred by the late Ita Brennan – to victory.
From a beginning checklist of 43 combos, which included all three particular person Olympic medallists from Paris, solely 12 combos made it by way of to the second spherical jump-off.
Swede Rolf-Göran Bengtsson and Zuccero Hv had set what appeared like an unbeatable time of 51.64 seconds within the jump-off.
With the Irish mixture final to compete within the closing spherical, Pender and HHS Calais left all of the poles in place to cease the timers nearly a second sooner than Bengtsson and Zuccero, in a time of fifty.88 seconds, to take the victory.
Spaniard Armando Trapote with Twister Vs, who had held pole place earlier within the closing spherical, accomplished the rostrum with a 3rd place end.
Pender’s Barcelona victory comes on the again of his latest gold medal on the Younger Horse World Championships in Belgium, whereas Pender and HHS Calais (ISH) jumped double clear within the five-star BMO Nations Cup at Spruce Meadows, Canada, to assist Eire obtain a runner-up end early final month.
