Switzerland’s Guerdat and Is-Minka are brilliant winners in Bordeaux
Reigning European champion, Switzerland’s Steve Guerdat, steered his own 11-year-old mare Is-Minka to victory at the penultimate leg of the Longines FEI Jumping World Cup™ 2023/2024 Western European League series in Bordeaux, France tonight.
Just six horse-and-rider combinations found the key to the first course set by French designer Jean-Francois Morand and, pathfinder in the jump-off, Guerdat set the standard with another great round to stop the clock on 40.34 seconds which proved the winning time.
The enthusiastic French spectators had plenty to cheer about when their own rising star, 22-year-old Jeanne Sadran, slotted into runner-up spot with the stallion Dexter de Kerglenn while Great Britain’s Harry Charles finished third with Sherlock, his winner at the seventh leg in La Coruna, Spain last December.
Belgium’s Pieter Devos (Casual DV Z) lined up in fourth ahead of French legend Roger Yves Bost (Ballerine du Vilpione) in fifth while Israel’s Isabella Russekoff (C Vier 2) claimed sixth place.
Well qualified and now lying fifth on the series leaderboard, Guerdat will be bidding to become the first four-time FEI World Cup™ champion at the Longines Final 2024 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in April.
The last of the 14 Western European League qualifiers will take place in Gothenburg, Sweden in three weeks’ time.