(acm/mps) The world’s leading riders were on parade for the first time in the two opening competitions – both for the Bardusch GmbH Textil-Mietdienste prize – on Thursday afternoon in the Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle. Proceedings started with the foreign riders being given the opportunity to acquaint themselves with the new fences and the enlarged – by 1000 m² - riding surface in the Stuttgart arena. And the highly experienced John Whitaker coped best of all. The Briton secured the first international jumping win at the 21 STUTTGART GERMAN MASTERS on the 14-year-old gelding Lactic when going clear in 55.87 seconds. He finished ahead of Keri Potter-Pessoa from Brazil who also went clear on Rockford when finishing in 57.21 seconds. In third place was Nicole Shahinian-Simpson from USA on El Campeons Tosca (0/57.51).
Following immediately afterwards was the first show of strength for the top German jumpers. It was won by Rene Tebbel, who successfully mastered all the fences on the twelve-year-old chestnut gelding Denver in a time of 57.15 seconds. Just behind him in second was Tjark Nagel, who also went clear on Ivana in 57.34 seconds. Local hero Jürgen Kurz on Check Up was well back in third (0/59,93).
