Germany's Marcus Ehning has won a few Rolex watches in his time, but he has rarely had to work harder for one of the exquisite time-pieces than he did on Saturday night when winning the 10th qualifying leg of the 2009/2010 Rolex FEI World Cup Jumping series at Bordeaux in France.
At the end of the toughest competition of the series to date, where the course proved too much for the vast majority, Ehning went into a two-way jump-off against fellow-countryman Philipp Weishaupt. And despite all his enormous experience, the man who was first to wear the new green and gold armband as leading rider in the Rolex World Rankings when it was first introduced last December, had to ride for his life to win by the miniscule margin of one-hundredth of a second with Leconte.
 Marcus Ehning and Leconte. © Christophe Bricot/FEI |
Course designer Frank Rothenberger thought he had built a challenging enough track at Leipzig two weeks ago, but it didn't turn out that way when 16 horse-and-rider combinations went through to the jump-off won by Ireland's Jessica Kuerten. So this time around he was determined there should be no more than the ideal seven or eight in the second-round decider. But once again it didn't work out the way he expected.
This was the toughest of tracks, and although the eventual winner described it as "very fair" he was the only one of the eight riders from the top-eleven on the latest Rolex Rankings list to find his way home without incident.
"This was a tough one to win," Ehning admitted afterwards. "It was a really tough course - everything came up so quickly and the oxers were big and wide in the first round. With me for sure this is the biggest win with Leconte - I'm very happy with him" he added. He got the horse, who competed for Australia at the Olympic Games in Hong Kong in 2008 with Matthew Williams in the saddle, at the beginning of last year. "He did a few good things with me last season and he went well in the German Classics but this is definitely his best result so far" he pointed out. And he added "I've been in close finishes before, but it can't get any closer than this!".
He has now pushed long-standing leader Eric Van der Vleuten of The Netherlands out of top spot on the series leaderboard while Weishaupt has moved into third ahead of Schwizer in fourth ahead of the next leg at Vigo in Spain next Saturday night.
The stats
Facts and Figures:
There were 37 starters in the competition
Only two clear rounds
Marcus Ehning won by a margin of just one-hundredth of a second
5 riders collected just four faults
France had the largest number of riders, with 12 in total.
The next highest number came from Germany with 5
There was one elimination, and four retirements - including German star Ludger Beerbaum with Couleur Rubin
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