The eighth and penultimate leg of the 2024 Australian FEI World Cup season was held this afternoon as part of the Sydney Summer Classic show, held at SIEC. Held in soggy conditions with persistent light drizzle, what was already a small field of nine combinations soon became just six after three late scratchings were announced and with Billy Raymont having two entries in the field meaning that only five combinations were eligible to pick up World Cup Series points, the most that anybody would score today would be only nine world cup points.

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Despite the low numbers, it was a top-class field of riders, which included Billy, Jamie Kermond, Josh Collins, Merrick Ubank and Tom McDermott. In the first round, half of the combinations went clear, including Josh Collins and Cornel, and Jamie Kermond and Tulara Stolensky, with the quickest being Billy Raymont and Caprino, who are in red-hot form having picked up wins at three of the past four World Cup Qualifiers in which they had competed.

Above: Billy Raymont and Caprino.

With such a small field, all six combinations were invited back for the second round. Remarkably, each of the first five combinations out in the second round recorded a single rail each, and with the simple addition of four penalties to each combination’s first round score there was no change in the order. It wasn’t until the last combination out, Billy Raymont and Caprino, that the pattern was broken. They showed the others how it should be done. Not only were they clear, but they emphasized their superiority by completing the course more than 3.5 seconds faster than their nearest rivals. It was an emphatic victory, bringing to four their tally of wins out of the seven legs in which they competed this season. The win today, even though Caprino was not Billy’s World Cup point scoring nomination, (riders who compete on more than one horse in a World Cup Qualifier must nominate which of their mounts whey want to score world cup points on, before the competition and Billy nominated Tulara Dakchiko) means that he has all but sewn up the series win, before the last leg of the 2024 Series, which will be held at Sale in February 2025.

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Second place went to Jamie Kermond and the very promising mare Tulara Stolensky, who was having only her third World Cup Start and achieved her first top 10 finish. Their total was four penalties, finishing the second round in 65.82 seconds beating Josh Collins and Cornel into third, who also incurred a total of four penalties with a time of 68.34 seconds.

Above: Jamie Kermond and Tulara Stolensky

Above: Josh Collins and Cornel

So, while it was a wet afternoon, the competition was hot. We saw probably the best combination in Australia at the moment take out the win, beating home some very good opposition and we look forward to seeing what the future has in store for Billy Raymont and the 12-year-old gelding Caprino.

The full listing of placings in the World Cup Qualifier are listed below.

SYDNEY SUMMER CLASSIC WORLD CUP QUALIFIER CSI1*-W

Results sourced from globalentriesonline.com.au