In the end, a jump off was needed to decide who would win the Nations Cup at the CSIO4* in Morocco at 1.50m, after Team Germany looked like the sure winner for a long time: France’s Jeanne Sadran delivered the fastest round in the four-person team event with Dexter de Kerglenn (v. Mylord Carthago) as second rider, securing her team’s victory ahead of Morocco and Germany. The final pole fell to Mike van Olst on Comme Elle Faut Odth Z (v. Comme il Faut), which meant fourth place for Belgium.
For Team Germany, Marie Ligges sent Ballerina NRW (v. Diamond) as the starting rider in both rounds, delivering a safe zero. Harm Lahde was sent to the track by Team Chef Ralf Runge with Oak’s Grobe Commander Bond (v. Comme il Faut) as second rider. In the first round, there was a slight error at the bar on jump 10, which also became dangerous for some of the competitors. In round two, the safe zero was delivered. Tom Schewe delivered the next zero with Congress Blue PS (v. Chacco Blue) in round one, but unfortunately he had an abort early in the second round on the jump. In round one, Maximilian Lill sent Kommandant 10 (v. Comme il Faut) to the track, which meant that Team Germany not only went into round two as the leading nation, but after the two zero rounds in the second round, they had two chances to secure the victory with a flawless round. But after Tom Schewe's slight mistake, the bad luck also came: In round two, Maximilian Lill took the last pole after a very confident ride.
The teams from France and Belgium had been closely chasing their German rivals since the first round. But after three nil-score rounds in the second round, the hosts from Morocco were suddenly close behind as well. At the end of the two rounds, all four teams had four points-scoring errors on their scores, and that meant a tiebreaker had to be decided.
Morocco opened the competition with Abdelkebir Ouddar on the festival’s course in Argouges (v. Armitages Boy) with the next zero in 33.78 seconds. Jeanne Sadran beat the time with flawless 33.24 seconds. Tom Schewe was also flawless afterwards, but needed 34.93 seconds, which meant bronze after the last rider, Mike van Olst, had placed Belgium in fourth place with a throw.
Team manager Ralf Runge commented on the result to spring-reiter.de as follows: „I am super happy with the team. They all rode great, especially Marie with her double zero rounds. With Maxi it was just bad luck on the last jump, but the horse is also still young and somewhat inexperienced at this level. The horses of Maxi and Tom are only nine years old. Of course we could have finished the job sooner and we have to, but that’s part of learning and gaining valuable experience.“
The complete result here