June 22, 2025 
On a day Americans needed good news, Karl Cook delivered. The last time a U.S. athlete won the CSIO5* 1.60m Grand Prix of Rotterdam was 10 years ago. Cook broke the spell, dominating with his incredible mare Caracole de la Roque.
The last time the 13-year-old Selle Francais mare (Zandor x Kannan) competed at Rotterdam was 2022 with Julien Epaillard, and she finished third. To date, she’s never dropped a rail in this very Grand Prix. She was under a second too slow three years ago.
This time around, she reached the speed gears she needed.
“We had a plan, but with Caracole, she is so fast that you can’t really think much,” Cook said of the horse’s natural speed. “You just have to ride and hope that you are quick enough to stay with her, because she’s going to be faster than you. You just have to keep up as best you can.”
Cook stayed the course with his superstar partner and crossed the timers in 37.17 seconds. The remaining pairs tried but just couldn’t catch them. Nina Mallevaey of France, aboard Dynastie de Beaufour, finished second, about a second off the time, and Great Britain’s Donald Whitaker and Millfield Colette were the third-place finishers.
“I think the course was really interesting,” he said of Bart Vonck’s track, which saw rails down everywhere. “Original is a great way to explain it. It was really creative, it tested people from the first fence to the last fence, there were time faults, there were a bunch of clears, we saw a big spectrum of things.”
Caracole de la Roque has now won 33 international classes, over double her second and third placings combined. She has 10 1.60m victories to her name, and her jump-off win rate is 54%, so she’s more likely to be the winner than not when she clears the first round (Jumpr stats). She’s a natural-born winner, and Cook has had to adapt his own riding to best suit her.
“She is really special,” he said of his Olympic mount. “I have to thank my whole team at Pomponio and my parents who own her, and the U.S. team for selecting us for this great show. She is just such a committed horse; whatever she does, she throws her body completely at it. That’s what makes her such a great sport horse; she is fully confident and she has only one speed. It is inspiring.”
One of Caracole’s best qualities is her innate self confidence. In a world where it’s increasingly hard to believe in one’s self, this mare knows what she’s capable of and leaves it all in the ring.
“She’s as eager to win as I am, maybe even more so,” Cook said, now a staple in United States show jumping and competing in the biggest events worldwide. “Every time we enter a competition we get a little better as a pair. Of course, things sometimes go wrong, but when everything falls into place, this is the result.”
