Rik Hemeryck takes the Grand Prix after an incredible scenario in Saint-Lô
Original article : https://grandprix.info/fr/102848/Rik-Hemeryck-soffre-le-Grand-Prix-au-terme-dun-scenario-Inoui-a-SaintLo
Rik Hemeryck, riding Inouï du Seigneur, won the serious 1.55m Grand Prix at the CSI 4* in Saint-Lô in an original scenario on Sunday 27 October. In fact, no rider managed to score a double clear round in this two-round event, so the Belgian won with a penalty point from the first round, where four perfect rounds had been recorded. He finished ahead of Pénélope Leprévost and her very good Ehning Flamingo, who collected two points, and Lorenzo De Luca and Violino Il Palazetto, who finished with one fault.
Inouï ( ‘Incredible’ in French), that’s the name of the very powerful gelding who won the 1.55m Grand Prix at the CSI4* in Saint-Lô late on Sunday afternoon, with Rik Hemeryck, but it’s also an adjective that could be used to describe the scenario of this demanding event! There were four clear rounds in the first part, but no double clear rounds, and the winner came out on top with a score of one point. All in all, the atmosphere was just as crazy as this traditional competition! Once again this year, just under three thousand people packed into the hall of the Pôle hippique in the prefecture of La Manche to watch the weekend’s major event. Some very determined spectators even arrived well before the start of the main event, before 8am in the morning, to try to buy some of the tickets that had not been sold via the online ticket office! The organisers had deliberately blocked the box office just before the maximum capacity was reached, in order to minimise the number of disappointed spectators. As soon as the Grand Prix kicked off, shortly after 3pm, Valentin Besnard signed a clear round with Farfelue de Beaufour, much to the delight of the audience, who congratulated him warmly.
Bruno Rocuet’s former rider almost made the course laid out by Grégory Bodo look easy, so much so that the maestro slightly shortened his time limit, but the rest of the test proved that it was rather devilishly tricky! The clear red palanque placed in number seven, three strides after an oxer, was particularly at fault. The co-designer of the layout for the Paris Olympic Games had also tightened up the time allowed a little, but had also set up a rather original double made up of spa bars and a vertical – a design he had used for the individual final in Versailles – in number eight, as well as some very wide oxers. On paper, Tim Gredley was one of the riders most likely to obtain a good placing in this event with his Médoc de Toxandria, but he conceded a fault on the number three oxer, placed just beside the access gate to the paddock. But in this competition, the big favourite, in the hearts at least, was obviously Julien Épaillard! The world number six received rapturous applause as soon as he appeared in the Manche arena, and although he was unable to avoid a fault from Dubaï de Soie in the middle of the triple, his very fast time enabled him to qualify for the second round, open to twelve couples.
Five other riders who had already scored four points, two who had only been penalised for exceeding the time limit, and four who had achieved the sacrosanct clear round, found themselves in the second act. Right from the start of the second act, faults were rife on the second difficulty of the shortened course, a fairly dry vertical at the end of a curve. It was here that Julien Épaillard and his son Quaoukoura du Ty took their total to eight points, synonymous with ninth place in the final, but also that Bel Canto de Boguin and Cancun Torel, the partners of Romain Duguet and Victor Bettendorf, made mistakes. Teaming up with Violino Il Palazetto, a fifteen-year-old gelding that he usually competes in 1.50m classes, Lorenzo De Luca was the only competitor to drop a bar in the first round to sign a perfect round in his second passage, to the euphoria of the public. Pénélope Leprévost, who had bet on the good Ehning Flamingo, which GRANDPRIX has just profiled, then managed to keep her two penalty points and take the lead, but was immediately followed by Rik Hemeryck and Inouï du Seigneur, who had only picked up one point in the first round. The Belgian was in the thick of it, as he came within thirty hundredths of a second of adding a second to his tally, which would have put him behind the Normandy rider!
However, the first three competitors that had completed a first clear round failed one after the other in the second round: Régis Bouguennec on fence number three with Firefox GEM, then Valentin Besnard and Jérôme Guéry on fence number two with Farfelue de Beaufour and Careca LS Elite. Last to start on Illusion, which had already given him second place in Friday’s major event, Titouan Schumacher ‘only' had to sign a new clear round to win. The Frenchman was confident, as well as the public supporting him, but towards the end an oxer fell. He was thus relegated to sixth place, while victory went to Rik Hemeryck in a scenario that was… incredible! The Belgian rider (whose bay partner seems destined for a great future given his seemingly limitless resources) had not won a 4* Grand Prix since his success at Bolesworth in 2019, alongside the stylish Ulyss Morinda. Nor had he taken part in the Jumping international indoor de Saint-Lô since 2017. ‘That year, with Bretling du Paradis, I finished second in the Grand Prix (then 3* label, editor’s note) behind Jeroen Dubbeldam and Zenith*SFN,' he recalls.
