It’s the last day of the XXVI Sunshine Tour and it sure lived up to its name. The very difficult situation that we are facing with the Corvid-19 pandemic, has led to the early closure of the Tour this year in order to protect the riders and everyone involved in this event. Yesterday we announced that this would be our last day of jumping, an unprecedented event in over 25 years of competitions here.

At the very least both riders and horses have had a great day today enjoying the wonderful competition facilities. Over the course of the day there were numerous classes including the Grand Prix class sponsored by Suzuki. The French anthem sounded out for our winner the Olympic rider Penélope Leprevost and her marvellous horse Vancouver de Lanlore with the fastest jump-off time of 39.91sec. There were 17 riders through to the jump-off and in second place was Guido Klatte with Qinghai. Guido really has had an excellent Tour this year and deserved this placing after a superb round. Third was the Brazilian rider Stephan Barcha with Artois D’Avillon. This rider was part of his home team in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

The amazing young Irish rider, Jason Foley was once again at the top of the podium in the 1.45m class sponsored by Marqués de Riscal. This time he was riding the lovely grey, Castlefield Vegas. This class had a large number in the jump off with 24 of the 90 entrants going through. The course was designed by Marcos Nuñez in the expansive grass arena, Hicksted. Jason beat the Polish rider Andrzej Oplatek by a few hundredths of a second. Andrzej was riding Stakkatan who was born and raised in the stables of the renown Paul Schockemöhle. This was not his only good result today here at Montenmedio. The British rider, Charlie Jones took third place.

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