Germany, the reigning European and Olympic champions, travelled to this European Show Jumping Championships at San Patrignano, Italy, July 21-24, with one goal: to retain their title.

And just as they had in 2003 in their home country at Donaueschingen, Germany’s show jumping riders achieved a double victory.

With a deep pool of talented riders and horses, Germany could have sent two teams with a chance to win gold and a third one with a chance for a medal. Combinations like Otto Becker on Dobel’s Cento, Ludger Beerbaum with Couleur Rubin, Lars Nieberg and Lucie or the German Champions Rene Tebbel and Quel Homme stayed at home.

In the Nations Cup, the Germans defended their title in superior style. Marco Kutscher turned in double-clear performances on Montender, while Christian Ahlmann rode C?r to a clear first round and 4 faults in the second.

Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum and Check-mate contributed scores of 8 and 4 faults, while Marcus Ehning on Gitania had 4- and 12-fault performances. With six European team titles since 1963, Germany has taken the lead in the statistics ahead of Great Britain, which has five to its name.

The German juggernaut continued in the individual placings, when Kutscher and Montender prevailed for German individual gold. Switzerland’s Christina Liebherr rode L.B. No Mercy into a historic silver individual medal, while Jeroen Dubbeldam, of the Netherlands, claimed bronze on BMC Nassau.

The German team established the lead early, in the speed leg. A speed class run over a Table A course, the first leg’s placings are converted into faults. The winner of the class (Ehning on Gitania) received no faults, while everyone else received scores calculated by halving the difference between their and Ehning’s times.

The team total of 6 points for Germany put them in the lead, but only by a small margin over France (7.48) and the Netherlands (7.76). But the Germans widened the gap in the first round of the second leg, a Nations Cup format. Ahlmann and Kutscher recorded clean rounds, with Ehning and Gitania picking up just one rail and Michaels-Beerbaum recording the drop score of 12 with Checkmate, a younger horse who was substituting for her World Cup Champion Shutterfly, who incurred a minor injury before the European Championships.

The Dutch riders couldn’t put together a single clean round and added 16 faults to their total to stay in second. Three of the French riders had disastrous days, and despite Laurent Goffinet’s clear first round on Flipper d’Elle, they fell to sixth before Round 2.

For the French, the outcome of the Nations Cup was a catastrophe. With 28 and 24 faults, the two-time Nations Cup Super League victors dropped to seventh place (59.48).

German victory could have only been prevented with two complete failures in the second round. But Kutscher rode Montender to another brilliantly clean round, and Michaels-Beerbaum and Ahlmann picked up just 4 faults each. Ehning’s final trip would count only for his individual result, since the team gold was sewn up. Unfortunately, his 12 faults there dropped him out of individual medal contention.

With his double-clear rounds, Kutschser–the individual bronze medallist at the Athens Olympics–took over the lead in the individual medal race. Liebherr and L.B. No Mercy jumped the only other double-clear round.

The Netherlands kept third place (35.76), and the riders were satisfied with this result, since as Dubbeldam said, “The season has gone, so far, pretty badly for us. We have good combinations, but no luck and quite a lot of injuries. Therefore the team bronze medal is a great success for us.”

The Swiss team fought their way up from eighth place after the speed class to a third place after the first round and then into the silver team medal in the end (34.42).

Markus Fuchs, the runner-up in the World Rankings behind Michaels-Beerbaum at the start of the championships, had a disastrous speed class and then accumulated 16 faults in the first round of the Nations Cup. La Toya, his typically sensible mare, got tense in the warm-up in the main arena on Wednesday when she was confronted with the two huge video screens standing directly at the ring in two corners. Finally, with just one pole down in the second round of the Nations Cup, Fuchs was able to contribute a result to the silver medal of his team.

Germany’s wide margin of victory in the team event wasn’t replicated in the individual final. Kutscher had no room for error in the second round, after he’d pulled a rail in the first round and Liebherr had gone clean. Kutscher was 0.9 penalties ahead of Liebherr going into the last course.

But with another clear round, Kutscher earned his first international individual title and became the 13th rider to earn the individual European Championship for his country. Pressure didn’t seem to bother the 30-year-old employee of Ludger Beerbaum.

Liebherr and No Mercy’s silver medal represented the 20th anniversary of another Swiss woman’s individual silver–Heidi Hauri took second in 1985. Liebherr, 26, is a student of the German show jumper and instructor Susanne Behring.

Dubbeldam earned the bronze (11.62) with the Dutch-bred stallion BMC Nassau. For the 32-year-old rider, a long hard haul had come to an end. His mount for individual Olympic gold in 2000, De Sjem, took time off due to injuries. So, Dubbeldam had to turn to Nassau, who just started jumping the bigger classes last year.

The reigning European Champions Ahlmann and C?r looked to be in contention to defend their title, standing second before the final leg, but one pole down in each round left them fifth in the final standings.

Michaels-Beerbaum and the inexperienced Checkmate placed ninth in the end after turning in a double-clear performance in the final leg. Their two poles down in the final combination in the first Nations Cup round cost them.

Speed leg winner Ehning retired Gitania in the second round of the individual final–the mare looked tired the day before, then stopped at the fourth fence on course.