April 1, 2024 
There is no shortage of phenomenal show jumping horses in the world right now.
King Edward holds the most championship titles, as the current Olympic, World, and World Cup gold medalist. Legacy won the most World Cup qualifiers in the 2023/2024 season—five! Landon has the most 1.60m wins over the past 365 days, at six.
But Christian Kukuk’s Checker 47 has them all beat on one key metric: earnings.
The 14-year-old Westphalian gelding (Comme Il Faut 5 x Come On) is the highest earning horse over the past 14 days with €186,242 in prize money won, according to his Jumpr App stats.
He’s also the highest earning horse over the past 365 days—with an incredible €1,664,544 in prize money. (His career earnings are €2,156,062.)
The bulk of that payday has been earned in the past six months.
Kukuk and Checker 47 have won three 5* grands prix since October 2023, including LGCT Riyadh, GCL Super Cup in Praha and, this past weekend, the Rolex Grand Prix in Wellington, FL, the final Saturday Night Lights of the 2024 Winter Equestrian Festival season.
It’s their first Rolex Grand Prix title and first time at WEF.
“I had goosebumps after that last fence,” said Kukuk, 34. “It’s an incredible feeling. I had only heard about Wellington and the Rolex week before this. I brought my two best horses and everything went exactly how I wanted.”
“These [Rolex classes] are the best grand prix events in the year—we all know that—and we all work for them in the end.”
Nine combinations advanced to the jump off in Guilherme Jorge’s course. Among them were proven 5* Grand Prix winners Daniel Bluman (ISR) and Ladriano Z, Ben Maher (GBR) with Dallas Vegas Batilly, Darragh Kenny (IRL) and VDL Cartello and Karl Cook (USA) and Kalinka van’t Zorgvliet.
Kukuk and Checker, however, were in a class of their own as the only pair to post a sub-36 second round.
USA’s McLain Ward and new mount Ilex set the time to beat at 36.24 seconds. Last to return, Kukuk laid it all on the line—”I knew there was not much to think about, I just had to go for it”—and stopped the clock at 35.82.
“The pressure was a bit on and I could feel it in the warm-up, but I need that to be honest,” continued the German rider.
“I knew I could not do the same strides [as McLain], but I could try to turn a bit tighter after the double and that worked very well. When I landed, I knew I could be close so I tried everything I could and left one out to the last.”
In 27 rounds at the 1.60m height, Checker 47 jumped clear 59% of the time and averaged just 2.9 faults (Jumpr App).
Kukuk also finished second in Thursday’s qualifier at WEF with Mumbai, adding to his earnings record. He’s the second highest earning rider in the past 365 days with just over €2 million won. Henrik von Eckermann is the highest at €2.44 million (Jumpr App).
