Text © World of Showjumping

The home riders dominated in Saturday’s CSI5* 1.60m Coupe de Genève, with Steve Guerdat in first, Edouard Schmitz in second and Niklaus Schurtenberger in third. 

The Coupe de Genève is a special class, consisting of six obstacles – one single fence as the first jump, four doubles, and today a quadruple. Twelve of the 35 horse-and-rider combinations in the class left all the fences up, and much to the delight of the home crowd five of them were Swiss.

As second to go in the jump-off, Schmitz and Gamin van’t Naastveldhof (Chacco Chacco x Toulon) set the time to beat to 32.93 seconds with a quick round where the young Swiss talent took advantage of his gelding’s huge stride. However, a few riders later Guerdat made the roof lift in Palexpo when delivering a fantastic round on Venard de Cerisy (Open Up de Semilly x Djalisco du Guet) – galloping on five strides down to the one remaining combination, then racing up the hill alongside the lake to get a perfect shot at the penultimate oxer before he cleared the last vertical. The clock showed 32.16 seconds, and it exploded at CHI Geneva as the biggest home hero of all took the lead. As last to go, Schurtenberger gave the Swiss the dream finish with another clear round from C-Steffra (Clarimo x Lavall I) in 34.66 – good enough for third place. Fastest of all was Daniel Deusser (GER) and Killer Queen VDM (Eldorado vd Zeshoek x For Pleasure), but the mare clipped a rail on the last upright and the two dropped down on the result list – making it an all Swiss podium. 

“I like this class, we have had it here in Geneva for a long time,” Guerdat said about the Coupe de Genève. “I have been good in it a few times, and Venard also won it in 2019. It’s a good exercise for the horses, it can be a young horse or an experienced horse – they like to jump it, and it’s not a very technical class as it’s more about the ability of the horse. Then you also have a fast jump-off with not so many fences in it. It’s a class I really enjoy riding, and I think a lot of the other riders enjoy this kind of class too.”

“He has been super!” Guerdat said of Venard de Cerisy. “He is a good combination jumper, and he was really good in the first round today so I was very confident going in for the jump-off – it really suited me, and he was really nice to ride. I’m very happy with him!”