Round-up from the Valkenswaard leg of the LGCT.

A mixture of luck and courage gave Australian horsewoman Edwina Tops-Alexander victory on Sunday in the final CSI5* feature class of the Longines Global Champions Tour in Valkenswaard.
The Australian was riding with her extraordinary mount Lintea Tequila to win the competition over 1.55m ahead of second ranked Tiffany Foster with 13 year-old KWPN Victor (Elmshorn) and third placed Harrie Smolders with Don VHP Z (Diamant de Semilly). The rest of the top-ten was as follows:
4th Paola AMilibia Puig ESP Prunella D’Ariel
5th Steve Guerdat SUI Corbinian
6th Al Ajami Faleh Suwead QAT Come Soon
7th Rodrigo Pessoa BRA Status
8th Athina Onassis De Miranda GRE AD Contanga
9th Kevin Staut FRA Elky van het Indihof
10th Gregory Wathelet BEL Egano van het Slogenhof
CLICK HERE for a full set of the results: http://eventcontent.hippoonline.de/1065/sta_erg/07_ergENG.htm?style=longines
To continue, it was Marco Kutscher that won the LGCT GP with 13 year-old KWPN stallion Van Gogh and owned by Stal Horn BVB. The German overcame the difficult rainy conditions to win in the newly inaugurated arena at Valkenswaard and come away with a cool 300.000 euros.
Several riders on the other hand weren’t as brave and decided to pull out of the competition such as Germany’s Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum (with Comanche), Greece’s Athina Onassis De Miranda (with Ad Rackham’Jo) and Swiss rider Jane Richard Philips with Pablo de Virton.
There were some big names that failed to go beyond the first round like German rider Christian Ahlmann (22 penalties with Colorit), Kevin Staut (12 penalties with Elky van het Indihof) and Brazil’s Rodrigo Pessoa (8 penalties with Status).18 went through to the second round with this number being whittled down to 6 for the jump-off. In addition to Kutscher, Simon Delestre with Qlassic Bois Margot (2nd with 0 penalties), Mohammed Bassem Hassan with Eurocommerce California (3rd with 0 penalties), Henk van de Pol and Willink (4th with 0 penalties), Gregory Wathelet with Algorythem (5th with 4 penalties) and Scott Brash 6th with Hello Sanctos (4 penalties) all went through to the final stage.
Scottish star Scott Brash leads the overall standings after the latest leg of the tour on 276 points followed closely behind by Portugal’s Luciana Diniz (254) in second and Sweden’s Rolf-Goran Bengtsson (222) in third. The rest of the top-ten is as follows:
4th Christian Ahlmann GER 205
5th Simon Delestre FRA 200
6th Sheikh Ali Bin Khalid Al Thani QAT 195
7th John Whitaker GBR 155
8th Penelope Leprevost FRA 136
9th Bertram Allen IRL 134
10th Pius Schwizer SUI 133
To see more please click here: http://eventcontent.hippoonline.de/1065/docs/LGCT_ranking_Valkenswaard_2015.pdfThe GCT now heads to the Italian capital for the first ever Rome edition of the tour.
www.globalchampionstour.com
photo Stefano Grasso/LGCT