Equestrian Sport
Peter Charles nailed the five points he needed to guarantee qualification for the World Cup final in Gothenburg next April, despite hitting a fence in the first round of the Olympia round on Saturday.
Charles missed the cut for the jump-off when Traxdata Carnavelly dived over the third fence, taking out the back rail for an expensive four faults that left him sharing ninth place with six other riders. It was a disappointing result after his third-place finish in Geneva the week before, but ninth was still high enough up the order to earn him the necessary points for the final.
"It was my fault," Charles said. "I was a bit casual into it. It was a cheap rail."
Charles now has 44 points in the western European league and, even though he is 13 adrift of the current leader, Saturday's winner Rene Tebbel, he has done enough to clinch a place on the Gothenburg startlist.
German rider Tebbel clinched the big one at Olympia on Saturday to net himself £11,000 sterling in prize money at the expense of Switzerland's Beat Mandli.
Robert Smith earned a pay cheque worth £500 more than the World Cup winner when he went the full distance in yesterday's Masters with the Jimmy McCloskey protege Senator Kalusha. The eight-year-old Dutch-bred, which has been in McCloskey's Derry yard since June, came out to win for Smith on the opening day here and maintained the form yesterday from a seven-horse field.
