Irish showjumper Mikey Pender achieved one the biggest wins of his career to date when taking the €300,000 five-star Longines Grand Prix in Barcelona on Friday night.
The event, part of the League Of Nations Final, saw the 25-year-old Kildare rider partner the Irish Sport Horse HHS Calais – bred by the late Ita Brennan – to victory.
From a starting list of 43 combinations, which included all three individual Olympic medallists from Paris, only 12 combinations made it through to the second round jump-off.
Swede Rolf-Göran Bengtsson and Zuccero Hv had set what looked like an unbeatable time of 51.64 seconds in the jump-off.
With the Irish combination last to compete in the final round, Pender and HHS Calais left all the poles in place to stop the timers almost a second faster than Bengtsson and Zuccero, in a time of 50.88 seconds, to take the victory.
Spaniard Armando Trapote with Tornado Vs, who had held pole position earlier in the final round, completed the podium with a third place finish.
Pender’s Barcelona victory comes on the back of his recent gold medal at the Young Horse World Championships in Belgium, while Pender and HHS Calais (ISH) jumped double clear in the five-star BMO Nations Cup at Spruce Meadows, Canada, to help Ireland achieve a runner-up finish early last month.
