Brits avoid Nations Cup relegation

Britain has avoided relegation in the Furusiyya FEI Nations Cup series, pulling a top performance out of the bag in the nick of time.

Danger zone

The team came second behind the USA in the final leg of the Europe Division 1 series in Dublin. This gave them enough points to move out of the danger zone, jumping from ninth to sixth place.

The Brits clearly meant business and Ben Maher was the only rider to incur penalties in the first round, when Cella had a pole at the vertical after the water to finish on four faults.

Scott Brash (Hello Sanctos), Joe Clee (Utamaro d’Ecaussines) and Spencer Roe (Wonder Why) rose to the pressure of the occasion and jumped clear. This put them in pole position alongside the Netherlands on zero penalties.

Lot of pressure

Round two saw the Dutch move out of contention after clocking up 20 penalties. Britain also added to their tally, with Ben, Scott and Joe all having one fence down. Spencer produced one of four double clears, which saved the day.

While their total score of eight faults wasn’t enough to win the class, the winning USA team wasn’t eligible for points so second place was enough to secure their spot in next year’s division one.

“I’m very, veryproud of the team,” said Rob Hoesktra, world class showjumping performance manager. “They were under a lot of pressure to do well and all week we’ve only talked about winning.

“For what we wanted to achieve, as far as I’m concerned we won. They all looked really good today and as I said before I am so proud of them.”

Performed well

According to Rob the aim of the Nations Cups is enable young riders to gain some experience at this level.

“Some have performed incredibly well, a prime example of this would Spencer Roe with his double clear today which played a crucial role in our second place finish,” said Rob.

The USA achieved their third consecutive Nations Cup win. Double clears came fromCharlie Jayne (Chill RZ) andJessica Springsteen, who was riding Peter Charles’ Olympic gold-medal winning horse Vindicat. Katie Dinan (Nougat du Valet) had four faults across the two rounds, whileBeezie Madden who led the team to victory at Hickstead had two down the first round.

She didn’t need to jump again as the teams total of four faults was enough to win the class.

Qualifying teams

The teams to qualify for the final in Barcelona alongside Britain are Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and Spain.

Those that failed to make the cut are Ireland, Switzerland and Ukraine.