Ph. Falsterbo Horse Show
One of Falsterbo Horse Show’s most iconic classes, the €75,000 Falsterbo Derby presented by Gigantprint, took part on Saturday, July 9th preceding the last day of competition in Falsterbo, Sweden.
The course proved to be a tough challenge, with only two riders out of the 23 pairs who took part in the class producing a first clear round. However, neither of those managed to complete the jump off without fault.
The Czech Republic’s Ales Opatrny produced the fastest clear round riding the 10-year-old Oldenburg gelding Acovaro (Acodetto I X Calvaro) in 170.98 seconds. Opatrny was first to go in the jump off and picked up a fault to finish in 52.62 seconds.
The only threat for Opatrny was the Irishman Shane Sweetnam and the 15-year-old Swedish stallion Cyklon who have been producing great results this weekend, winning their classes on Thursday and Friday. Sweetnam finished the first round without fault in a time of 172.10 seconds but he couldn’t beat Opatrny’s result in the jump off and had to settle for 2nd place with 4 faults in 55.18 seconds.
The 3rd place went to Romain Duget from Switzerland, who was the fastest of the four faulters aboard the 10-year-old Anglo-Arabian mare Sherazade du Gevaudan (Tinka’s Boy X Iago C) with a time of 158.44 seconds.
More Irish riders proved to be in top form, also into the four faulters were Darragh Kenny riding Zahra II in 165.81 seconds to earn 4th place while 5th place was for Billy Twomeny and Diaghilev in 167.00 seconds. Shane Breen also produced a good result for Ireland placing 7th with Acoustik Solo du Baloubet and Anthony Condon and Chinook II finished just outside the placings in 13th place.
The Longines Falsterbo Grand Prix will close the CSIO5* competition on Sunday, taking place at 2:00 pm local time and can be seen live at feitv.com.
See full results here.