Royal International Horse Show Results 2013: Germany Dominates Nations Cup Field

Coming into this week’s event at Hickstead, Germany were one of the more fancied nations to do well in the team events, given the way things have gone for their riders in recent months.

These teams will have lest met in Falsterbo, Sweden, and it was there that the Germans achieved their most recent victory of the season.

This is despite the fact that the same quartet were forced to retire from an event in Switzerland.

Since then, however, Germany have been on a rampant streak, winning in Rotterdam and also finishing third in Aachen, their own backyard.

Things went much the same at the All England Jumping Course on Friday as Germany made the best of phases one and two to blow the rest of their competition out of the water.

In total, Otto Becker’s team picked up just the four penalty points across both rounds, eight less than any other opponent managed to accumulate in the event.

Described as “masterful” by the FEI’s official Twitter account, there isn’t many in the field who could have posed much competition to the Bavarian bruisers.

Hans-Dieter Dreher had the best time for his team on both attempts and was the only one of a strong German outfit not to register a time of more than 82 seconds.

That being said, Meredith Beerbaum-Michaels and Marcus Ehning were both very impressive in their runs, raking in fastest times of 81.98 seconds and 81.70 seconds, respectively.

France were actually not far behind their rivals in terms of qualifying time, but managed to rack up 12 penalty points and were thus still some way off the mark.

Coming it sixth place, hosts Great Britain continue to struggle with the pace of Division One and risk dropping down to Division Two after these latter stages of the season.