At the Nations Cup tournament for show jumpers in St. Gallen, Switzerland, the German team made it onto the podium with third place.
“I’m super happy,” said national coach Otto Becker. “We had a great team here at the start, everyone was able to contribute a clear round to the result and we’re on the podium.” Victory was decided between Brazil and Switzerland in a play-off, which the hosts ultimately dominated. After two laps, both teams only had four penalty points on their account.
Sixth place after round one
After the first round, the teams from Brazil and Switzerland had already claimed the top two places, Team Germany was initially in sixth place out of eight. In the second round, the German show jumpers started catching up and worked their way up to third place. The German quartet finished this Nations Cup with a total of eight penalty points after two rounds.
For Germany, Hans-Dieter Dreher (Eimeldingen) on Elysium, Marcel Marschall (Altheim) on Coolio, the current German champion Mario Stevens (Molbergen) on Starissa and David Will (Marburg) on My Prins van Dorperheide competed in St. Gallen. Dreher, Marshal and Stevens all contributed one clean round and one round with a discard each to the team’s score. Will had two downs in the first round but also cleaned in round two.
The winning Swiss team included 2012 Olympic champion Steve Guerdat with Venard de Cerisy, Bryan Balsiger with Dubai du Bois Pinchet, Edouard Schmitz with Gamin van’t Naastverldhof and 2022 World Cup final winner Martin Fuchs with Leone Jei.
Switzerland decides in the jump-off
Fuchs went into the jump-off for Switzerland, shooting clean in 42.14 seconds. Brazil sent Yuri Mansur onto Miss Blue in the decisive jump-off, but he conceded a knockdown at the last obstacle.
St. Gallen was the first of six Nations Cup stations of the season. Station number two is Sopot in Poland in two weeks, the Nations Cup final will be held in Barcelona at the end of September and beginning of October.