It is going to be hard to top this result in the future: And if anyone manages to do so, it will surely be Ijsbrand Chardon himself: He won the individual classification of the Prize of the Family Richard Talbot at the World Equestrian Festival, CHIO Aachen 2007 for the tenth time. He ranked first with 156.91 points after the dressage competition on Thursday (July 5th), which he also won, the Marathon on Saturday (July 7th) and the concluding obstacle driving course on Sunday (July 8th) ahead of the Swiss former World Champion, Werner Ulrich (159.38) and the Hungarian driver, Zoltan Lazar (160.49).
Christoph Sandmann (Laehden; 161.04), who took bronze at the World Championships last year, was the best German driver. He was lying in second place after the Marathon, but after ranking only 16th in the obstacle test, he fell back to sixth place in the overall result.
Chardon won silver at the 2006 FEI World Equestrian Games in Aachen, behind the Belgian Felix Brasseur. Brasseur unfortuntately wasn’t able to compete in Aachen this year, because he had to hand over his Lusitano team to the Portuguese driver Christopher de Beck in the winter.
The Dutch four-in-hand drivers comprising of Ijsbrand Chardon, Koos de Ronde and Theo Timmermann also won the Nations’ Cup with a score of 328.06 points ahead of Hungary (336.81) and Switzerland (338.81). The German team, which last year included Michael Freund who has since retired came XXXX at the 2006 FEI. Here at the CHIO the equipe consisting of Christoph Sandmann, Rainer Duen, who had to compete with a reserve horse in Aachen, and Ludwig Weinmayr were placed fourth with a score of 356.29.
“That certainly wasn’t a crowning achievement today and I am disappointed,” was the comment of the German National Coach, Ewald Maier on the unsatisfactory performance of his team in the obstacle driving test. “Chardon had left the door wide open for Sandmann having collected time penalties. Even if he had only made two mistakes he would have still taken the lead, but then he made two mistakes and also picked up time faults, because he drove too slowly.” The otherwise cheerful National Coach wasn’t impressed with his other team drivers either. “Neither of the two drove the obstacle test with the team in mind. I really was expecting them to drive clear.“ Duen landed in 17th place overall, Weinmayr in 19th place. Josef Zeitler (9th) and the youngster Christian Plücker (8th), who is part of the upcoming driving team trained by Michael Freund, made a better job of things. “He drove fantastically considering it was the first time he has competed in Aachen,” Maier Plücker said with respect. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to change the composition of the team to nominate Zeitler,” the National Coach stated with regret. It was already too late to alter the nonimations after we learned that we had to change Duen’s team due to one of his horses being injured. “I thought we would achieve a similar overall score as the Dutch, but I am genuinely disappointed at the final outcome.”
Check the results.