Press release from the Mediterranean Equestrian Tour 

Ireland’s Niall Talbot and the 10-year-old stallion Charming Dream Z (Carrera VDL x Cagliostro 161) won Sunday’s CSI3* 1.50m Oliva Nova Beach & Golf Resort Grand Prix at Centro Ecuestre Oliva Nova in Spain, where the penultimate week of the 2025-edition of Autumn MET concluded on Sunday.

For Talbot, this win was an emotional one. "I lost a very good friend, John Mulvey, this week,” he shared. “He was a very popular guy and a great horseman in Ireland and he passed away after a long illness on Tuesday. His funeral was on Friday, and it was special for me to get a win like this now. Today was for him, I think we maybe had a little help from above.”

With a time of 39.40 seconds in a jump-off of ten, Talbot bested a field of 59 horse-and-rider combinations, taking the win ahead of Belgium’s Bart Jay Junior Vandecasteele and Vamos de La Pomme d’Or Z (Vigo d’Arsouilles x Ogano Sitte), who had to settle for the runner-up spot when the clock stopped on 40.10.

Tomma Thiesen (GER) and Macklemore Von Der Soehr (Manchester van’T Paradijs x Quiwi Dream) took third with a time of 40.26, followed by Mariano Martinez Bastida (ESP) on Poseidon v/d Molendreef (Comme Il Faut 5 x Casco 4) in fourth in 40.92, while a time of 41.35 saw the French legend Michel Robert aboard Calasto Z (Calvaro F.C. x Stakkato) finish fifth.

“He's a horse we think a lot of,” Niall Talbot said about Charming Dream Z. “He's been jumping at this level this year, and all summer he's been just kind of knocking on the door for a win. I'm delighted that we got one now this week at three-star Grand Prix level.”

Explaining his winning strategy over the course set by France's Gregory Bodo, Talbot detailed: “I walked the jump-off course beforehand because there were some new jumps for it, and I just made my plan. The first line was from an oxer to a vertical with nine strides and because my horse has a lot of stride I knew I could get up there on eight. I think that's probably where he won the class, in the first line where we left the stride out. Then for the rest, I just stuck to my plan and kept everything as tight as I could – and, thankfully, everything paid off.”

“I love it here,” Talbot, a familiar face at Centro Ecuestre Oliva Nova, said about the venue. “I've been coming here since the beginning of the MET. We come every spring and every autumn. I think it's a great place to produce horses, and to bring students because they have competitions for every level. It's a great place to work out of with all the rings quite close to each other, and the courses and surfaces are good. We really like coming here.”