The nine-year-old Holsteiner gelding Zuccini MN, owned by Ben Leuwer, is one of the horses secured as potential Olympic contenders for Germany as part of the Road2LA initiative. At the CCI3*-L in Vittel, it was clear to see why. Already after the dressage, the trainer from Bonn’s Rodderberg and his Zuccero HV son had taken the lead with 27.5 penalty points. They performed confidently in the cross-country, incurring just 0.4 time penalties, and thanks to a clear round, they sealed the victory in Vittel today.

Second place went to Alexis Goury of France, who finished third at the European Championships, riding another promising young horse, the eight-year-old stallion Iron de Brunel, for whom this was the best result of his career to date. He finished with a dressage score of 31.8 penalty points.

Second place for Klimke and Candy

Olympic team champion Ingrid Klimke and her eight-year-old Hanoverian mare Candy celebrated a fine victory in the CCI3*-S. The Carridam daughter had delivered by far the best dressage performance of the 42 competitors in the arena, scoring 25.6 penalty points. In the cross-country, the pair cleared all obstacles without faults but didn’t push quite as hard as some of their competitors, which resulted in 7.6 time penalties. However, they jumped clear today and thus finished second with 33.2 penalty points behind France’s Lisa Gualtieri on A D’Aunis (32.6).

Things didn’t go as well for Klimke with the 10-year-old Belgian mare Kallista, whom she had acquired from Sven Lux last summer. The Chatman daughter had already achieved three-star victories and two four-star placings under Lux. After several three-star wins, Ingrid Klimke debuted her at the four-star level last October in Strzegom, but they were eliminated there due to a fall between the fences. Things went better four weeks ago in Oudkarspel, where they placed ninth. This weekend, the pair had another fall at obstacle 7a and were unable to finish the competition.

The winner was French rider Sébastien Cavaillon on Elipso de la Vigne, a 12-year-old son of Arko III.

You can find all the results from Vittel here.