AWC 2023: Great Britain ends German dominance

The third decision of this World Championship has been made. Great Britain takes the gold medal after coming back from sixth place. In the moment immediately after the run, they probably wouldn’t have expected that they would even still get a medal – or for sure not the golden one. The eventual world champion’s run was not spared from faults. There was a disqualification for James Adams with Willow and a mistake for Stephanie Best with Skedaddle. The other two, Lily Dakin with Scout and Steven Richardson with Willow, remained clean. The time also wasn’t bad. At that point, there were only two other teams, Poland and Denmark, that had even completed three runs without making a mistake. These two also won in the mentioned order the Team Agility  competition. Due to previous mistakes in Jumping they were behind the British in the combination.

Now we could say that the other five teams have diligently provided support to Great Britain. None of the five remaining nations Estonia, France, Belgium, Czech Republic and Germany completed at least three runs without making any mistakes or completed their runs in a better time. Belgium came close and had the better time overall. Due to more overtime and the associated penalty points in the Agility run, they were ranked second behind the British. France also had the same result with one fault, or in this case it was a refusal, out of the three runs. The refusal then cost the French the podium. Neighbors Luxembourg, who started as the tenth-to-last team, benefited from this and got the third place.

The first two place winners from Jumping, Germany and the Czech Republic, were unable to match their performance. The two-woman team with Aneta Obrusníková and Lenka Fuksová from the Czech Republic got one clean run, but also a result with one mistake and one refusal. Fifth place for the team in the end. But the Jumping on Wednesday will still go down in the history of this World Championship. The last team at the start, Germany, had to lose even more ground. Tobias Wüst and Krisztina Beitl-Kabai remained clean, while Silas Boogk had one refusal and one error. Daniel Schröder did not reach the goal. In the end, Germany finished 7th. Maria Sori and Daim from Finland set the fastest time overall.

Medium Team (full Results)
Great Britain (L. Dakin – Scout, S. Richardson – Willow, S. Best – Skedaddle, J. Adams – Willow)
Belgium (M. Van Beeck – Peejay, A. Prezzi – Finn, T. Verbesselt – Sep, V. Jacobs – Sid)
Luxembourg (G. Welfringer – G-Force, J. Celmar – Ink, N. Seuré – New, N. Schmitz – Dylan)