June 9, 2025 
Oh, La Baule, I love you so much.
Jumping International de La Baule in La Baule, France is a perfect horse show. There is one ring, one beautiful grass ring. Everything happens for four days once a year in this ring. And what happens there is show jumping, our favorite sport. There is nothing else.
And that’s the way a lot of us in this game live our lives, like there’s nothing else. It’s nice to be in a place that gets that.
Equestrian events have taken place in La Baule since the turn of the century, and the first CSIO was in 1960, making this the 64th edition. (I believe we lost a year to Covid.) It is an event that is so important to the local community that the town itself, along with the gracious sponsorship of Rolex as part of their Equestrian Series, contributes a large part of the funding.
And the spectators, gifted with free admission, flood in and fill the stands.
Sunday held the most perfect class of the most perfect horse show: the $500k 5* Grand Prix.
As far as viewing opportunities, I was flush with them. First, I had admission to a VIP suite via my membership in the FEI Jumping Owners Club (pass). Next, I had a gracious invite to a pricey table in the “public restaurant.” (No thanks). Then I was credentialed as an owner so I had access to the Rider’s Restaurant. (Nah). What I chose was the Press Terrace, a lovely, roomy space at the top of the stands.
I’m sorry—I wanted absolutely nothing to distract me from the sport. No sea bass swimming in a delicate broth. (I went without eating until 7pm.) No chatter, no french-style cheek-to-cheek kissing, just—HORSES. Just—SPORT.
And I was kinda in love with the course. It was designed by Frenchman Gregory Bodo, who worked on both the Tokyo and Paris Olympic games. As an example of some of the obstacles, we had the usual water jump to the super-high (and plank-topped!) vertical, which then bent to an audience-adjacent, solid-red (horses can’t see red, to them it’s a mucky green that blends into the grass) skinny vertical. This rolled back viciously to a super-big, airy green oxer (another visual difficulty) with an enormous liverpool beneath it.
And then you turned to the last line, which was, like the red skinny, up against the crowd and consisted of a triple bar going into the iconic Rolex green triple. Triple to a triple!
It really was a fantastic course, exciting and challenging all around. And we had SEVEN of the world’s top ten there to contest it!
Of course we had our new World Number One Kent Farrington, last year’s winner, and we had Henrik von Eckermann and McLain Ward, we had Steve Guerdat (La Suisse!) and Cian O’Connor, and also Kevin Staut and Richard Vogel!
And let us not forget world number 16, that riding phenom Daniel Deusser, our eventual winner.
Contesting the course were 50 horse-and-rider combinations. In the end, eight made it through. But let me take a minute to speak of horses.
First, let us note that delightful little mare Hello Folie ridden by Scott Brash (they took fifth). Folie means madness in french and honestly, I think this little thing is well-named. Oh, this one inspires some lust in a horse owner! Who wouldn’t want to see a little chestnut mare throwing herself, all heart, over lofty fences, displaying athleticism and courage in equal measure? Hello Folie is a ten-year-old Luidam out of a Diamant mare and is the full sister of Candy de Nantuel, a stallion that’s breeding like crazy all over France and even has a baby in my own stable!
Now let’s say something about Imperial HBF, that unbelievable hottie, that new horse of McLain Ward, the eventual third-place finisher. This horse (by VDL Glasgow vh Merelsnest) scoots around a course like he’s in a training round, all the more remarkable as the partnership with McLain is so new. Oh, and he’s just gorgeous! It is easy to see why former rider Tim Gredley called selling him one of the hardest decisions of his life, but also a privilege, as his opportunities with McLain are seemingly endless.
Londina! This horse rode to second place in a jump off performance that had the crowd absolutely screaming its head off. This is because Colombian rider Rene Lopez Lizarazo has made his home in France for decades and is now an adopted son. What he does not know is that several years ago when his connections were bidding on Londina in the 2021 Performance Sales International Auction, the famous show jumping and dressage auction founded by Paul Schockemöhle and Ullrich Kasselmann, another horse owner with a stable in Wellington, Florida was bidding against him. That person is this author.
That year, Londina (London x Chacco Blue) was the most expensive horse in the auction, selling for 1,950,000 euro. Ok, so yeah—I was knocked out early. Instead, I purchased an embryo by London out of Gregory Wathelet’s former mount, the 1.60-jumping mare Oh D’Eole, a now-two-year-old I named Loon after those aquatic birds whose beautiful, eery cries entrance me as they echo across the water of our northerly lakes in my home state of Minnesota.
One can only hope for similar performances and results in the future.
But here we were, at the jump off. Ward had put in a spectacular performance, which we all thought was the winner. Then came Lopez Lizarazo, stunning us all with an even faster time. Last to go was Deusser, on Otello de Guldenboom.
Otello is an eleven-year-old Tobago Z by Caretino stallion and wouldn’t you know—Deusser also rode the daddy, a stallion owned by Scuderia 1918 and whose semen, based on what I’ve seen of his production, is something we should all be eager to acquire for our breeding programs. What I saw was an agile, little cat-like thing arcing over the jumps, but in the press conference we were assured the rides are very different, Tobago being a small horse and Otello being “very big.”
But I am told every horse has a tendency to look small with the long-legged Deusser.
Long legs, but short jump off time—Deusser allowed Lopez Lizarazo only 30 seconds of ecstatic joy before he trounced him by shaving more than a second off his time.
“I had never prayed harder for someone to get a rail,” Lopez admitted laughingly in the press conference (translated from the french). I guess God wasn’t listening.
Now comes the best part.
Not one person moved out of their seat, except to stand up, encouraged by a man with a microphone in a green suit who flung himself jubilantly around the grass field for the prize giving. We began rhythmically clapping in time to happy music pouring out of the perfect sound system. You see, at Jumping International de La Baule, we the audience, we the passionate spectators, are unified in our love of sport, and we aren’t leaving until we get the chance to make our throats scratchy from screaming, our hands bruised from clapping, our feet sore from stomping!
We got Rosie the Rolex Series mascot, we had champagne showers, with Deusser absolutely drenching his friend Lopez Lizarazo who then pretended to ask for a drink, only to turn the bottle around for some sneaky revenge. (Ward had exited stage left to save himself.)
And in a masterful end to the ceremony, the dedicated jump crew, numbering nearly one hundred persons, kidnapped their boss and tossed him bodily into the derby water obstacle in the center of the field.
Oh, La Baule, I love you so much!
