Sat, 01 Jul 2023
Manx equestrian star Yasmin Ingham, has won the highly competitive and prestigious SAP Cup at Aachen, Germany.
Competing at Aachen as part of Team GB, Ingham produced dressage score on Friday morning of 23.5, to head not only the individual rankings, but also spearhead Team GB. Ingham was disappointed with herself to then pick up time faults during her show jumping round last night, and although she jumped clear, the time faults dropped her to 3rd place.
Having just been long-listed for this summers European Eventing Championships on both her top horses (Banzai Du Loir & Rehy DJ) Ingham chose to take her World Championship mount Banzai to Germany, seeking redemption after their glance off in Kentucky earlier this spring which cost them a potential podium finish.
This mornings cross country day dawned with drizzle and slippery conditions, and to keep the European dreams alive, Ingham needed to produce a clear jumping round across the notoriously tricky and twisty Aachen track. Running near the end of the class, Ingham has been able to watch a number of rounds and noted that the time had been impossible to achieve. However, her and Banzai set off in determined fashion chasing down the optimum time of 6 min 55 seconds, coming home in the fastest time of the day, just 4 seconds over the time.
Then came the waiting, German maestro Michi Jung was in second place, and teammate Tom McEwen was currently leading and with the scores so tight, they could only afford to be 6 seconds over the time to stay ahead of Ingham who was the clubhouse leader. Michi stopped the clock 7 seconds slow, meaning he dropped behind Ingham by just 0.1 on a penalty. the pressure was now on McEwen, and when he horse glanced off the skinny arrowhead at fence 18, the win belonged to Yasmin.
Reporter: Jessica Collister