First Grand Prix Special, first victory for Evelyn Eger and Global Power in Fontainebleau

Evelyn Eger and her nine-year-old Grey Flanell son Global Power had already put in an exceptionally fine performance yesterday in the Grand Prix, where they were only beaten by a whisker to finish second. Today in the Grand Prix Special at Fontainebleau they went one better.

Special premiere

It was the first special ever for the Oldenburg black horse at his first international show. The two showed a wonderful performance with clearly defined differences between the tempi’s in the trot tour, relaxed, ground covering strong walk, sublime and rhythmically stable collected walk, relaxed and confidently jumped series changes, very centered pirouettes and a lot of talent for piaffe and passage, where the gelding still needs to gain strength and security.

In the piaffe out of the collected walk, you could see that Global Power could score highly here one day if he can keep his balance safely. But that is exactly what he lost here after the first kicks and a snort. This also affected the transition into the passage, where he shook his head once and snorted again. A fly? In any case, that was one of the less pleasant moments of the otherwise harmonious test. The other was the shot after the strong canter. The gelding had already jumped the change when he seemed to have been startled by something behind the corner and faltered briefly. That cost him points.

But again today: a performance with wonderful contact, always a suitable frame and a relaxed, contentedly moving horse. With 70.340 percent, they were the only pair to receive a score of more than 70 percent and all five judges had them at the top.

The other winners

Second place went to Jeanine Nekeman from the Netherlands on Game Boy STH (68.787). They were followed by the winners of yesterday’s Grand Prix, José Antonio Garcia Lena and Quatre-Quarts a L’Orange (68.511). Pierre Volla (FRA) and Malcolm X de Massa, who were third yesterday, finished a very close fourth today (68.489).

You can find all the results here.