Equestrian sport – Frankfurt am Main – premiere for Weishaupt: victory in the Grand Prix of Frankfurt – sport
Frankfurt/Main (dpa) – After 40.54 seconds, Philipp Weishaupt galloped on Zineday across the finish line at the Grand Prix in Frankfurt’s Festhalle – at this time none of his competitors came close: victory for the 37-year-old Riesenbecker and prize money of 17,500 Euro. Tim Rieskamp-Goedeking was only 0.3 seconds slower with Ventago, he finished second, followed by Philipp Schulze Topphoff from Havixbeck with Clemens.
A victory for Rieskamp-Goedeking would have been the crowning glory for him, because the man from Steinhagen dominated events on the course throughout the weekend. He was among the front runners in all tests: he won two international show jumping tests with his stallion Coldplay and came fourth in another with Ventago. He doesn’t have a tactic, said the 40-year-old man from Steinhagen. And with good reason: “When I try tactics, it usually doesn’t work. I always have to have a bit of emotion involved.”
The outstanding rider in the dressage arena was once again the multiple Olympic champion Isabell Werth. The woman from Rheinberg competed with her 16-year-old Emilio and won both the Grand Prix and the freestyle in Frankfurt for the seventh time in her career. And that in the Grand Prix under difficult conditions – during their ride, fireworks-like noises rang out from a defective loudspeaker.
Everything went smoothly during the freestyle on Sunday: the judges give her well over 85 percent, which is easily enough for victory ahead of the two-time team Olympic champion Dorothee Schneider from Framersheim with Faustus and Juliane Brunkhhorst from Hamburg with Aperol. “He did a very good job,” said the world’s most successful dressage rider about her Emilio. They hope for the next good season, after which the horse will “develop towards retirement”.
Matthias Alexander Rath won the Grand Prix Special for the first time. The 38-year-old Kronberger organized the Frankfurt tournament together with his family. Under the saddle he had his successful horse Destacado, with whom he won a series of tournaments in Stuttgart last month. Second place went to Patrik Kittel from Sweden with Forever Young, followed by Stefan Lehfellner from Austria with Roberto Carlos.
Rath was also successful as an organizer at the weekend. Around 50,000 people attended the four-day tournament, about the same number as at the last event in 2019 – a visitor record at the time. The organizers were struggling with the high energy prices and the cold weather. “We had to heat the warm-up tent every day because otherwise the ground would have frozen,” said Rath. A week before Christmas, however, he was able to announce good news for next year: in 2023, Frankfurt is to jump to four-star level for the first time.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:221218-99-946911/4