Beezie Madden and Breitling LS. PC: Spruce Meadows Media
Beezie Madden(USA) once again proved her winning ways against a distinguished roster of top international athletes competing this evening in the Duncan Ross Cup. Not only was this competition high stakes for its important world ranking points but also top prize money and potential qualification to compete in Sunday’s ‘Pan American’ Grand Prix, presented by Rolex.
Riding Breitling LS, an 11 year-old Stallion owned by Abigail Wexner, Madden joined seven top combinations in the jump off and came out victorious. Madden had this to say about the Peter Grant (CAN) designed course, “I went in the middle of the pack, third out of seven and the two before me both had faults so I thought the first round was difficult enough with most of the more challenging parts also appearing in the jump off – so I knew a clear round was important – so I tried to use a lot of speed around the fences and pull him together for the jumps.” She continued, “I needed to ensure I didn’t get to flat especially around to the double which I found with the tricky approach in the jump off would be even more difficult than the first round. The distance in the double was short – so it was just a hard test.”
Following Beezie to podium for second place was the only other athlete to post a double clear score in the 1.55m competition. Quentin Judge(USA) with a slightly more cautious jump off round showed the crowd a great ride with HH Quatour who performed spectacularly over the immense fences. Judge had this to say of his horse Quatour, “He’s a giant horse, but he is very – very careful so my plan in the jump off was to go his speed, he is not super fast but has a very long stride. I knew the combination was going to be very difficult for him, so I slowed down to the double and tried to make it up in other places.” Quentin finished the jump off round clean with a time 2.38 seconds behind Madden.
Following in third position was current Rolex Grand Prix champion of Aachen, Philipp Weishaupt(GER). He snuck-in by the narrowest of margins arriving to the finish with four faults and just one hundredth of a second ahead of fourth place finisher Pedro Veniss(BRA), winner of the Rolex Grand Slam event in Geneva last December.
Beezie Madden hoists the champions hardware with Mariel Hamou, General Manager at Duncan Ross
Results, Duncan Cup at Spruce Meadows:
