San Patrignano CSI-A (ITA) Equestrian sport against drugs and social outcasting

Fuchs wins the first race at San Patrignano three-day show jumping

The San Patrignano three-day show jumping contenst opened this afternoon with the class reserved for 7 years old young horses. The success went to Markus Fuchs actually holding the eighth place in the world rankings. Aboard the promising sorrel stallion Nivolino, the Swiss champion preceeded respectively the Italian Gianni Govoni second on Bablu, a bay mare of French breed, and the other big name in the Swiss team, Willi Melliger, third on the bay Liquido.

The group of the best was completed in the following order by the Belgian Francois Mathy Jnr on Calmero and the italians Roberto Arioldi aboard Anton 92 and Valerio Sozzi on Ladybird. This first competition has proved the excellent state of the arena ground which suffered no drawback from the tempest striking yesterday night on the whole Rimini area, and put therefore the course-director Olaf Petersen, President of the F.E.I. show-jumping Commission, in the condition to design a course particularly suited for young horses. Petersen, who for the fourth year cooperates with San Patrtignano community, has emphasized how good a chance this meeting provides in order to attract outsiders to this sport. As to FEI new projects aimed at making this sport even more popular, Petersen declared: "Quite positive has proven the choice to establish a new circuit for the Nations Cup, called "Superleague" wherein only the eight best teams in the world take part. We can compare it to the Champions League for soccer where a team, if not competitive enough, gets degraded to a lower circuit with the result of improving the technical and spectacular level of show-jumping".

www.sanpatrignano.org

.