4th place in Cannes, several wins in Opglabbeek
At the beginning of this month Victor Bettendorf stayed in Cannes (F) for the Global Champions Tour, where he achieved his best result of the weekend in the individual qualifier over 1.60 meters. Riding “Gibbs un Prince” he recorded the second-fastest time (71.52s) but missed the podium because of a knockdown in this CSI 5* competition with a prize fund of €80,000.
Last week Bettendorf was then a guest in Opglabbeek, Belgium, where he was able to notch up several wins. In a two-phase competition over 1.30 and 1.35 meters for seven- and eight-year-old young horses the Luxembourger reached the podium twice: on the mare Iphigenie Ideale he won in 30.13 seconds ahead of Brazilian Yuri Mansur, who triggered the photo-cell on Camo Waldstar in 30.50 seconds. The third-fastest time was again by Bettendorf, this time with the stallion Unity Touch (30.54s). On the same day the 36-year-old also achieved 8th place on Qwando Van De Rispen in a competition over 1.40 meters.
He secured the next victory in a qualifier that counted for the Longines Ranking: 27.65 seconds on Tajmahal Du Houlbec was the fastest time, ahead of Michael Jung (D, Bcc van www.olland.biz, 27.70s) and Kendra Claricia Brinkop (D, Ma Belle, 27.74s) Bettendorf, who has now moved up to 49th in the world ranking, rode “Qwando” to 3rd place in the concluding two-phase competition over 1.45 meters, which also counted for the Longines Ranking, in 32.63 seconds. It was won by Vinicius Paulino Pereira Silva (BRA, Mecho Van’t Kiezelhof, 31.96s) ahead of Rik Hemeryck (B, Navarra van het Eelshof, 32.30s).
This was followed by 6th place on Encore Toi du Linon over 1.35 meters and 10th place in the Grand Prix on the same horse over 1.60 meters, in which Bettendorf missed the jump-off of this competition—which also counted for the Longines Ranking—because of a knockdown.
Translated from German by AI and adjusted by Paul Krier. Original article also to be published in the “Lëtzebuerger Bauer” weekly newspaper.