Steve Guerdat joins select club as Swiss finish 1–2 in World Cup Final

Indeed, since the first jumping Final in 1979, also at Gothenburg’s Scandinavium Arena, only four riders had racked up three victories prior to Guerdat (although others have come close): Austria’s Hugo Simon, winner of the inaugural competition and then in 1996 and 1997; Brazil’s Rodrigo Pessoa in 1998, 1999 and 2000; Germany’s Marcus Ehning in 2003, 2006 and 2010, and Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum in 2005, 2008 and 2009.

Guerdat himself, who picked up a paycheque of €172,500 in Sweden on Sunday, had previously triumphed in World Cup Finals in Las Vegas in 2015 and Gothenburg in 2016. But the native of Bassecourt in the Jura region of northwestern Switzerland has the added distinction (alongside Ehning) of achieving the World Cup hat-trick with three different mounts: Albfuehren’s Paille, Corbinian and (this week) the 11-year-old black gelding, Alamo. 

That accomplishment reflects not only his versality as rider, but also skill in identifying horses who can rise to the occasion. “I look for a horse who wants to jump clear, period,” he explained in an interview with The Horse Rider’s Journal in 2016. “You can go on and on talking about canter, about scope and technique, but in the end you need a horse that wants to fight for you; that’s what it’s all about. I’ve achieved success with horses others would describe as bad, horses with terrible canter or that are really slow, even. But all of them wanted to fight and to be clear.”

And in his championship debut, Alamo certainly brought that spirit to the three-phase competition in Gothenburg, leaping into first place in last Thursday’s speed class. In Friday’s second class, however, the pair finished 13th with four faults, dropping them into third overall behind Spain’s Eduardo Alavarez Aznar and that evening’s winner, Sweden’s Peder Fredricson, heading into the decisive showdown Sunday. In fact, after a tough start Thursday, Fredricson had felt his only chance to be in contention would be if course designer Santiago Varela’s tracks were big enough to cause problems and shake up the standings. “It clearly depends on how the tracks are built the rest of the week,” he said at the time. “If they are really hard, things can happen.”

On Sunday, things definitely happened as Alvarez Aznar fell out of the running with two fences down, while Guerdat, his compatriot Martin Fuchs and Fredricson all had clear rides in the second round (after two, three and five faults respectively in the first), with Guerdat and Alamo stopping the clock in 65.05 seconds, Fuchs and Clooney 51 in 66.57  – good for second place as had been the case for them at the 2018 FEI World Equestrian Games in North Carolina – and Fredricson third in 67.38. Germany’s Daniel Deusser ended up fourth in the final standings with Tobago Z.  Watch here.

“I was a bit unsure going to the final today as this is his first championship and I was a little nervous on Friday after the speed class,” Guerdat said of his partner after their steely victory, “but in the end he has been amazing all week!” And while the rider’s Olympic champion mount Nino des Buissonnets retired from competition in 2016, horses like Alamo are expected to play a crucial role in the 37-year-old’s quest for future titles – no doubt challenged at every turn by top rivals like Fuchs.