“I’m really, really happy. Thanks a lot to the organisers for giving me a wild card. I wasn’t supposed to have been here,” explained the 2009 European champion. “The horse show is special for me, also because lots of French people come here, and the Stuttgart crowd supports all the riders to the same degree.”
At the crowning finale to the 37th International STUTTGART GERMAN MASTERS Horse Show in front of 7,500 enthusiastic equestrian fans, the Briton Harry Charles, who bagged the master win on Friday, finished in second place atop the 13-year-old gelding Casquo Blue (0/41.92). In doing so, he picked up 34,000 euro prize money for his efforts. He expressed his emotions in the post competition interview in the arena short and sweet in his best German – “Scheisse”. Later in the press conference he said his horse was not the fastest and it was “bittersweet to lose so narrowly”.
One place behind in third was Francois Xavier Boudant (Frankreich) on Brazyl du Mezel, a 12-year-old Selle-Francais gelding (0/42.08) and he took home 25,500 euro. “It was my first time in Stuttgart. It’s a super horse show with top competitions. I’ll be back.”
Hans-Dieter Dreher, the best German rider after coming fourth, summed up by saying, “It was a awesome week, I was placed in every class. Pity that it wasn’t enough today for the podium, but it was down to me as I just didn’t get the turn into the last jump right.”
Coming up in the Western European League until the end of the year are the World Cup stopovers in Madrid (23 to 26 November), La Coruna (1 to 3 December), London (13 to 18 December) and Mechelen (26 to 30 December).
