British Triumphant On Home Ground At Hickstead

The British team pulled off the latest in the long list of big surprises of the 2010 Meydan FEI Nations Cup™ series when scoring an emphatic win on their home turf at Hickstead this afternoon.  In a competition that saw the form-book once again turned on its head, and which saw riders enduring the most extreme of fluctuating fortunes, they crushed the opposition when proving themselves the only ones fully capable of mastering the mighty Hickstead track.  

Germany finished a full 15 faults behind in second place ahead of the USA in third and France in fourth while The Netherlands slotted into fifth.  The Irish, superb winners at Aachen just two weeks ago, struggled into sixth place while Spain and Sweden - each lumbered with a massive 40-fault score - shared seventh.  Switzerland meanwhile finished last, and it looks very much like the Swiss and Swedes are beyond rescue at the lower-end of the leaderboard going into next Friday's final competition in Dublin.

The bottom four teams on the 10-nation leaderboard will be relegated to the Promotional League in 2011 and the Dutch, Swedes and Swiss are holding those last four places along with the Polish team, which this week withdrew from the remainder of the series and is already destined for the second-division.

Formidable
Bob Ellis's track was nothing less than formidable and Kevin Staut's pathfinding 12-fault first-round score for France gave an early indication of just how difficult it would turn out to be.  The British had covered all the angles however.  "When we walked the course we all took the decision to take a longer line from the first fence to the second and to get ourselves into a good rhythm and not worry too much about the time - and it paid off in bucket loads" said team-leader Peter Charles afterwards.

The water tray under the oxer at the second element of the double at fence three led to plenty of double-takes and that was, unmercifully, followed by the wide open Hickstead water and then the traditionally tough Hickstead planks.  There was no let-up anywhere on the 12-fence course and the white gate at fence nine hit the deck regularly while the final line of a double to the 1.60m Meydan vertical claimed a large number of victims.  '"It was a big one alright" admitted Charles.

Bit Between Their Teeth
Not one rider returned a clean sheet at the end of the first round but the British already had the bit between their teeth with only four faults between them after single time penalties from both Charles (Murkas Pom D'Ami) and William Funnell (Billy Congo) and just two time penalties from Tina Fletcher (Hello Sailor) were counted, Michael Whitaker's eight with GIG Amai providing the discard score.

Germany was lying second with 14 faults ahead of the hopeful Swedes in third with 18 while the Dutch were just one fault further in arrears on 19 and the USA carried 21 into round two. The Irish had an uneasy time of it when picking up 26 and when Julien Eppaillard's 17 faults with Master Davier was dropped the French still had to take 13 from Nicolas Delmotte (Luccianno) and Staut's 12 with Silvana into account which left them well down in seventh place despite a great four-fault effort from Marie Pellegrin Etter and Admirable.

Sunk