Nayel Nassar rode his horse of a lifetime to a thrilling win on Sunday, June 5th at the Thunderbird Horse Park in Langley, British Columbia, winning the $129,000 Nations Week Finale Grand Prix CSIO4* over a five-horse jumpoff.
Lordan, a 12-year-old Hannoverian stallion (Lordanos x Landor), has been brought up throughout his career by Nassar, who represents Egypt. The two competed at the 2014 World Equestrian Games in Normandy, France, and in 2013 they won the HITS $1 Million Grand Prix at Saugerties.
But injury sidelined the stallion for a full year, and after a lengthy recovery that lasted throughout 2015, Nassar brought him back to competition in winning form at the beginning of 2016 when they won the $100,000 FEI World Cup Qualifier CSI2*-W at HITS Thermal in February.
Now with this latest victory, Nassar, a consummate horseman who rides with a soft, confident feel and is widely popular on the North American West Coast where he was based, can definitively say that his veteran partner is 100% back.
In front of a large crowd that turned up on a sunny afternoon in Vancouver to watch the week’s finale class, Nassar jumped clean over the Round 1 course along with four others. The USA’s Karl Cook and Tembla missed out on qualifying for the shorter course by a single time fault.
With Conor Swail and the up-and-coming Grafton picking up 8 faults in the jumpoff to finish 5th, and Canadian Riders Amy Millar with Heros and Brian Morton with Atlantis T adding a single rail to their scores for 4th and 3rd, respectively, just Nassar and Alberto Michan ended their day on double clears.
Michan, of Mexico, rode Gigolo van de Broekkant, a 10-year-old Belgian gelding (Heartbreaker x Concorde) over the shortened track in 36.91 seconds. But Nassar was able to slice through that time with Lordan, finishing on 35.06 seconds for the win.
See the full results list here.