Nicola Wilson achieves career high in Luhmühlen CCI4*

Nicola Wilson has achieved the best result of her career, coming second in the CCI4* at Luhmühlen.

Expensive time fault

Nicola narrowly missed out on taking the title as she jumped clear in the showjumping, but added three time penalties to finish just 0.6pen behind the leader.

“It was an expensive time fault or two, but Bulana gets better and better and better,” said Nicola.

It was a thrilling competition, with less than two penalties between the top three – all of who were female riders.

Fence in hand

Germany’s Bettina Hoy was in the lead following the cross-country, ahead of her compatriot Julia Krajewski. Julia and Samourai du Thot had one down in the final phase, which meant Bettina had a fence in hand. However Designer 10 had two down plus three time penalties, which dropped them down to third place and moved Julia up into pole position.

“If I hadn’t taken a pull, my horse wouldn’t have hit fence eight as he didn’t want to touch a pole,” said the up-and-coming German eventer. “I thought ‘damn’, but there were so few clear rounds and when Bettina had her fence and time faults, that’s how it happens sometimes and you’re a four-star winner!”

Exciting finish

USA’s Marilyn Little jumped clear to move up to fourth place on RF Scandalous while French rider Maxime Livio was also foot-perfect, rising six places to fifth on Opium de Verrieres.

Maxime is currently the runner-up in the FEI Classics, and this result means he has narrowed the gap between himself and leader Michael Jung to just six points. Nicola has leapt from 11th place to third, so an exciting finish is guaranteed at the finale at Burghley in September.