Peter Charles has Saturday's World Cup and Sunday's Grand Prix as his main goals at the Olympia show jumping championships this week, but says that he'll be building up gradually for the big classes.

Having ridden the Belgian-bred mare Orange Juice into seventh place in the opener, he then jumped halfway round in the next class before pulling up Carnavelley to save his firepower for tomorrow night's eliminator. Charles has been drawn first to go in the one-round speed that will decide the 18 to go through to Saturday's World Cup qualifier.

"I just wanted to give him a smell of the fences and a smell of the crowd," he said. "At a long competitive show like this, anyone who goes full tilt from the start won't be there at the finish, they'd just be burnt out by the end of the week." British rider Robert Smith doesn't seem too worried about burn-out, however, scorching to victory in both the opening classes. "I'm not here just to make up the numbers", the 40-year-old said, after scooping a £3,000 cash reward for his two wins.

Smith scored his first win of the week with the Dutch-bred Kalusha, which was ridden by Derry producer Jimmy McCloskey on the Irish circuit last autumn, before Smith took over the reins and steered the grey to an opening day win at Olympia 12 months ago in his first competitive outing with the horse.

He switched to Hennessey for yesterday's second class, but the result was still the same, with Smith heading the line-up at the finish. But two wins in a day is nothing new to the Warwickshire-based rider, who notched up no fewer than seven victories at the Millennium Horse of the Year Show last year.

Smith is now guaranteed a slot on the starting grid for tonight's Masters, a winner-take-all class with a potential £21,000 prizepot. Smith plans to ride Kalusha, his winner in this class last year, and must be considered a pretty hot favourite to add more loot to the Smith coffers, even at the risk of burn-out.