Week 2 of the Winter Equestrian Festival came to a peak on the Equestrian Village derby field Sunday, Jan. 21, with the $140,000 Keyflow Feeds USA CSI3* Grand Prix. Germany’s Richard Vogel returned to familiar territory after a banner year at Wellington International in 2023, and he stormed to victory aboard Cydello, winning the jump-off by more than a second. 

Sunday’s feature included 45 riders contesting a course designed by Germany’s Olaf Petersen Jr. From the list of starters, nine returned for the short course. Vogel and the 10-year-old Hannoverian gelding (Cascadello—For Evita, Forsyth FRH), owned by Coleridge Equestrian LLC, left it all on the field, crossing the finish line at 36.32 seconds, taking more than 3 seconds off the original time to beat, 39.17 seconds. 

Cydello is a new addition to Vogel’s string and the Coleridge Equestrian team, but he’s not an unknown quantity.

“I had my eye on him [Cydello] for a few years before we got him,” Vogel said. “He was born half an hour from our base in Germany. I know his breeders pretty well, but he was never really for sale. Eventually, I was able to sit on him, and it functions pretty well between the two of us.

“He has a lot of blood, and he really loves to jump, so that obviously makes the job as a rider much easier if the horse is so keen on jumping and jumping clean rounds,” Vogel continued. “He’s super careful, a lot of quality, but at the same time, he’s super brave, which I think you can see in the jump-off: The two last oxers there, they were far away, but he never doubts, and he was really keen on getting there, so he’s just giving us a great time.”

Watch their winning jump-off round, courtesy of ShowGroundsLive.com:

At the end of 2023, Vogel launched into the FEI’s world top-10 rankings after starting the year by winning last season’s Rolex Grand Prix in Wellington. Vogel has brought his top horses back to Florida in 2024, but he is eager to bring up greener horses such as Cydello as well. 

“Since he became part of our team he has just been getting better,” Vogel said. “We jumped him in Mexico towards the end of last year where he really made great progress and now we’re excited for the season here.”

A step down from Vogel on the podium was Belgium’s Nicola Philippaerts on his own Derby De Riverland, who stopped the clock at 37.69 seconds, and American Cathleen Driscoll and Idalgo, owned by Don Stewart, who completed the short course in 38.79 seconds.

See complete results here.