CSI4* Vejer de la Frontera: Sanne Thijssen claims the Big Tour Grand Prix

The Horseware sponsored Grand Prix class held the crowd enthralled from start to finish.

The second last to go from the 7 riders that got through to the jump off, was American rider, Michael Hughes with ‘Kashmir Van D’Oude Pastory’. Up to that point the Belgian rider, Gilles Thomas was in the lead on a time of 45.99s with ‘Luna Van Het Dennehof’. But Gilles was about to be knocked off the top spot. Michael came in and he rode a beautiful clear round, which was one of only four in the whole jump off. Michael went into the lead stopping the clock in just 45.34s and the cheers went up from the crowd. Alas, in the end he had to make do with second place on the podium as the very last to go was Dutch rider Sanne Thijssen with her long term partner the lovely ‘Con Quidam RB’. These two have been together for many seasons and their partnership absolutely shone through today. With the Sunday crowds cheering them on they absolutely blew Michael’s time out of the water stopping the clock in an amazing 40.86s, well over 4 seconds faster than the American pair.

Sanne was absolutely over the moon with this result and the large crowd greeted her with enthusiastic cheers as she cantered past the stands after her round. ‘Con Quidam RB’ is a stallion who is beautifully bred, by Quinar Z with dam sire Cardino 5, Sanne told us after the prize giving, “he is a horse that always, in each moment, knows what he has to do even if it is a really demanding track’. This partnership has a great list of results behind them the most notable of which must be the Barcelona Nations Cup in 2021, where the Dutch team took first place and Sanne was 14th Individually. They also represented their country in the Continental/Regional Championships 2015 and 2016. In the 2015 Championships in Austria they were Individually 11th and the team was 5th and in 2016 in Ireland, the team were 2nd and they were 4th individually. All this experience shines through in the ring, this is not their only great result here at the Andalucía Sunshine Tour, as they were also second in the Geolastic trophy here on Friday.

So in the end, Gilles Thomas and ‘Luna Van Het Dennehof’ took third place and the German rider Marcel Marschall was fourth with a lovely clear on ‘Extra Strong’. Fifth was Egyptian rider Karim El Zoghby, who was actually very fast and stopped the clock with the second fastest jump off time, but he had a pole down with ‘Gallos’.

Results HERE