Olivier and Nicola Philippaerts have 10 busy days ahead. They’ll particpate at the second leg of the Longines Global Champions Tour from Thursday on. The tension reaches its peak on Saturday night during the Grand Prix. Afterwards, they go straight to Miami. It will be Olivier’s first Longines Global Champions Tour competitions of this season. Nicola already kicked off the new season in Doha, with a 3rd place.
Olivier already started his busy days a little earlier, as he just returned from the World Cup Finals in Gothenburg. He finished 7th on the ranking list. He started with an impressive first round during the speedclass on Thursday. So Olivier and H&M Legend of Love begun the finals with a 3rd place. Unfortunately they got one fence down on day 2. They were 4th to start the last round on Sunday. “Actually, I don’t really know what went wrong.”, Explains Olivier, “I can’t explain why we made this mistake. I still believe that our distance was good. Legend slipped a bit and I got 8 penalties. I really don’t know why. Anyway, that mistake held us back from the stage. A 7th place is not that bad, but I hoped for a better result. I’m a little disappointed because I know we could do better than this.”.
From now on, all of our focus goes to the Longines Global Champions Tour. “I skipped the opening competition in Doha because I wanted to prepare myself as much as possible for the World Cup.”, Says Olivier, “H&M Extra and Catalya are 2 fresh horses that will do their very best. Mexico promises to be a special show. Leon Spronken, the owner of H&M Extra, planned to come to support us. He was really looking forward to this. Unfortunately, he can’t experience it anymore. Leon will ride on my Leon will ride on my shoulder and I hope he’ll give that Extra push to Extra to finish with an excellent result .”.
Nicola takes a fit H&M Chilli Willi to his 2nd Champions Tour of the season. “I gave him some rest after Doha. We worked on his condition, rode a little dressage and jumped a bit. That went smooth. Mexico is an amazing show, maybe even the most beautiful of the Global Tour. I hope that Chilli Willi can keep the same level as in Doha.”.
