Italy’s Emanuele Gaudiano, one of the Morocco Royal Tour’s most loyal riders, has won a respectable number of classes in Tetouan over the last ten years (as last Thursday and Friday with Jaja), but he has never won the Grand Prix Of Tétouan S.A.R Le Prince Heritier Moulay El Hassan. This is now the case, thanks to his powerful 10-year-old Belgian stallion Nikolaj de Music.
Thirty-five pairs started over Olympic course designer Gregory Bodo’s course, with the clear rounds coming almost exclusively from the Europeans, with only Morocco’s Vincent Zacharias Bourguignon getting in on the action with an excellent trip from his very young Zangersheide gelding Junius Vd Heffinck Z, with just two time penalties. There were ultimately nine making it into the jumpoff, with three Italian riders in the mix. The first of them, Roberto Previtali on Conthargo-Blue, logged the first clear round of the second leg, setting the tone. Belgium’s Cyril Cools and Germany’s Andre Thieme were faster, however, and the final Italian, Emanuele Gaudiano, put Northern Europe to rights with his athletic son of Kannan, bettering Cyril Cools and Milton Z’s time by almost two seconds.
“I made the difference mainly between the penultimate two obstacles, where I asked Nikolaj to take four strides, whereas the others took five, and then I went very fast to the last fence,” explained the Italian, who paid tribute to Nikolaj. “He wasn’t an easy horse. I’ve been riding him since he was four years old, and he’s indeed very strong, but now he’s a good four- and five-star horse, and this isn’t his first four-star Grand Prix victory.”