“We won already!” said Austrian Chef d’Equipe Marcus Wallishauser after his team shared top spot with Italy at the end of the first round of competition at the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ Final 2018 at the Real Club de Polo in Barcelona, Spain tonight. But there’s still a long way to go before the new champions are crowned on Sunday afternoon when the top eight teams from tonight’s class return to the arena for the second and deciding round.
The Austrians and Italians collected just a single time fault each, and with just four faults apiece Sweden, Belgium and The Netherlands have also made the cut along with the Irish who picked up five faults. But it came down to the combined times of team riders to separate the Swiss, French, Germans and Americans when they all completed with eight faults on the board.
And when the calculations were done it was the Swiss and French who were signed up for Sunday afternoon, while the Germans and Americans will join Canada, Great Britain, Brazil, the UAE and host nation of Spain in tomorrow night’s Challenge Cup for those that didn’t make it.
Wallishauser’s team booked their tickets to Barcelona when winning the Europe Division 2 qualifier in Budapest (HUN), but they were not hot favourites coming into tonight’s competition even though that victory in August was a convincing one when they trounced the opposition with a zero score.
“For us to be in the final is already perfect – now we just need to focus like we did today and let’s see what we can do!” said the Austrian team manager who is hoping that Roland Englebrecht (Chambery), Julia Houtzager-Kayser (Sterrehof’s Cayetano Z), Felix Koller (Captain future 3) and Max Kuhner (PSG Final) can continue this run of great form.
But as Italian anchorman, Lorenzo de Luca, pointed out tonight, the next challenge from Spanish course designer Santiago Varela is going to be considerably more testing.
“There’s still a big day ahead – Sunday is going to be huge!” ~ Lorenzo de Luca (Team Italy)
He picked up four faults with Ensor de Litrange but was under absolutely no pressure when last to go because team-mates Luca Marziani (Tokyo du Soleil) and Riccardo Pisani (Chaclot) had both jumped clear while Bruno Chimirri (Tower Mouche) clocked up just a single time fault. So that was all they would have to put on the board when the best three scores were taken into account.
“It was a very good night for Italy, my team all jumped great so I didn’t have to jump but I decided to bring my horse in to let him see the fences. We are going to celebrate tonight but we will still be focused for Sunday, I promise you!” de Luca added.
In stark contrast to the Italian rider, Irish anchorman Darragh Kenny had no room for error when he came into the ring. With five faults already on the board, another four would leave his team well outside the qualifying zone, but he kept a cool head to steer Balou du Reventon through the finish with nothing to add. “Our goal was to get into Sunday, that was the most important thing for us so we were very happy we did that. We have a great team and we’re all working really well together so I think we should do well. We’ll go out there trying to do our best and see what happens, that’s for sure!” he said.
Results here.
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