Daughter Beats Dad! Thijssen Family Tops €25,800 Horse Service International Grand Prix CSI 2*

By Jumper News on 22 22America/Sao_Paulo August 22America/Sao_Paulo 2022

Kronenberg, The Netherlands – August 20, 2022 – The Thijssen family made their name even more famous on Saturday at the Peelbergen Equestrian Centre. They not only won the feature class of the week but also managed a one-two finish in the €25,800 Horse Service International Grand Prix CSI 2*. In the end, it was the younger Mel Thijssen who prevailed with Cartolana 2, blazing past her father Leon Thijssen (NED) for the win!

Course designer Marco Hesse set up the 1.45m obstacles, featuring delicate jumps, like the vertical-vertical combination. Overall, 10 combinations managed to complete the first round in flawless fashion, thus advancing to the jump-off. Among them two combinations called more attention than the others, making the tiebreaker even more exciting, the decisive round put daughter and dad against each other.

Despite being the first ones to go Mel Thijssen (NED) and the super fast Cartolana 2 laid down the gauntlet, leaving all the poles up while blazing across the track with the 2010 dar Oldenburg mare (Cartogran x Lando) before tripping the timers in 46.02 seconds. The question was, could anyone catch her, what about her dad?

It turned out that Leon Thijssen (NED) came the closest aboard Zeppe Blue (VDL Zirocco Blue x Casantos) but it wasn’t close. Leon’s time of 48.14 seconds was over two seconds slower than his daughter, still good enough for second place.

Ivan Dalton (IRL) and Ex Ranger HH Z (Echo Van T Spieveld x Pablo V Berkenbroeck) also registered a clean scorecard, rounding out the top three in 49.12 seconds.