Britain’s top twelve riders will compete at the British Open Show Jumping Championships from April 6th to the 9th. The Open, offers the biggest single prize in British show jumping with over £150,000 in prize money and the esteemed title of British Open Champion.
In 2005, Robert Smith claimed victory aboard Kalusha. He will be joined this year by Nick Skelton, who finished third in the Al Maktoum Memorial Challenge and was the 2004 British Open Champion. Four Members of the Whitaker family were invited: Michael Whitaker and his younger brother John (the British Open Puissance winner in 2004), John’s son, Robert, (the British Open Champion in 2003) and the golden girl of British show jumping, Ellen. Ben Maher, winner of the 2005 Hickstead Derby, and Tim Stockdale have accepted their invitations to compete as has William Funnell, Mark Armstrong, Guy Williams and Tim Gredley. Gredley is just coming off of a strong performance in Wellington at the Winter Equestrian Festival. He took the €50,000 Jump for A Just World aboard Omelli. Gredley competed last year at the Open as a Young Rider and won the Welcome stakes aboard Medrano.
The rest of the field is composed of some of the best foreign riders on the International circuit.
The format of the British Open Show Jumping Championship is somewhat unique. Invited riders will compete in three initial championship classes, one of which will be held on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of the show. Each of the three competitions requires different skills from the horses and riders. Riders are only allowed to ride one horse in each of the championship competitions but they may select to ride a different horse in each of the three different types of competition.
Riders are then awarded points according to their final placing in each of these three competitions. Scores are accumulated at the end of the third competition. Only the top twenty riders will to the Final on Sunday afternoon.
Prior to the final, riders have the points, which they have accumulated in the first three rounds, converted to penalties. Riders carry these penalties forward to the first round of the Final and add any faults they incur to these penalties. At the end of the first round of the Final, the eight riders with the least number of penalty points advance to the final jump-off against the clock.
The rider with the least penalties at the completion of this jump-off will be crowned the British Open Champion. In the case of two riders tying for any position, the rider with the fastest time in the jump-off will be awarded the higher place.
A wide range of additional show jumping classes will be held over the four days including the International Accumulator on Friday and the ever-popular British Open Puissance on Saturday evening. There are also two classes for the top twenty under 23 riders in the country. Theses classes are supported by the British Equestrian Federation as part of their World Start and Potential program that identifies up and coming Britsih Riders.
HJN will be reporting on this years event.
You must be logged in to post a comment.