July 6, 2025 
It was at La Baule, France, in the Riders Restaurant, where I threw my hat down on the table and proclaimed it an embarrassment.
“I need a Team Fuchs hat!” I cried.
I was facing international rider and world number 7 Martin Fuchs, whose startled eyes met mine. He was holding a fork suspended halfway between his plate and his mouth. I had interrupted his lunch.
“Look at this hat!” I shouted, brandishing a cap emblazoned with KENT 4EVA, a piece of official merch from the Kent Dolls collection, the Kent Dolls being the super-secret, exquisitely-exclusive Team KPF Fan Club.
“It’s so embarrassing,” I repeated ingratiatingly.
“Are you going to be in Aachen?” Fuchs asked in a quiet and polite voice.
Oh, how that question haunts me now, now that I’ve just finished watching the Granddaddy of all GPs, part of the Rolex Grand Slam of Show Jumping, and witnessed Fuchs and his mount Leone Jei’s conclusive victory.
He promised me a hat, and I could have picked it up right there in North Rhine-Westphalia, but instead I’m lying in bed in Wellington, Florida, watching the livestream, whose camera offers limited visibility due to a wet lens from the incessant rain, and scratching a thousand mosquito bites. (There has been a Great Hatching in the Swamp).
But rain never stopped a show jumper, and it certainly didn’t slow down Fuchs or Leone Jei.
We made a date for Dublin when I noticed the boom mic above me. Someone was making a documentary starring Fuchs and now starring me. Me, crazily disavowing my Kent Dolls hat, a delicate position to have found myself in, considering I am Secretary-General of that organization.
“What?” I shouted at the film crew. “I don’t give my permission! I don’t give my permission!”
I grabbed the hat and slithered quickly past the witnesses to my betrayal.
But it all seems pretty justified now, with Fuchs atop that leaderboard, the winner by more than two seconds (2.12 to be exact) of the truest test of show jumping endurance in the sport.
This Grand Prix has been contested nearly every year since 1927, with only a pause during World War II and 2020, the year of covid quarantine. It is massive in every way, from the acreage of the enormous grass field to the height and width of the jumps to the length of the course to the size of the crowd. And to top it all off, it is fought over three rounds, a long first, a barely-shorter second, and a jump off.
We begin with 40 riders, 8 of whom inhabit the current Longines World Ranking Top Ten. We are also joined by ten previous winners of this same GP, including Marcus Ehning, Christian Ahlmann, Scott Brash, last year’s winner Andre Thieme, and Gerrit Nieberg, who sits atop a fetching paint horse named Ping Pong! A delicious and abundant show jumping buffet if there ever was one!
The first round consists of 14 obstacles, 18 efforts and has a time allowed of 92 seconds. There is nothing too tricky, the most common faults coming at the first element of the permanent set of double liverpools, which run alongside the lake decorating the south side of the arena.
The course designer isn’t looking to catch someone out, he’s looking to wear them down.
In this test, 18 of the 40 riders come back for the second round, in a winning-round sort of format. We haven’t a dearth of clears from the first—14 of the returning riders went clear, including nearly all of our American contingent: Laura Kraut, Lillie Keenan, and Kent (McLain and Imperial suffered from one unlucky rail). We also have German riders Richard Vogel, Sophie Hinners, and Olympic champions Christian Kukuk and Checker 47. And of course, the brilliant Swiss and boycotters of the Longines League of Nations series, Steve Guerdat and Fuchs.
The second round gives us 12 obstacles and 14 efforts. It hardly makes a change, considering the strength of the horses and riders present, with only three of the clear rounds adding faults, and with only a single rail each. These unfortunately include Kent and Greya and Nicola Philippaerts and his feisty mare Katanga vh Dingeshof.
As an aside, I need to mention that Philippaerts wears a truly bizarre-looking jacket, with teal rings of fabric around his wrists, making him look as if he is wearing large, chunky turquoise bracelets of the type favored by elderly women with new age beliefs, and wide seams of teal, which travel up his sides and make it look like he’s two sizes too big for the jacket and has torn it, exposing the lining.
So we have eleven pairs back for the jump off. The jump off is eight obstacles with nine efforts, a long looping course, curving around the arena’s permanent water obstacles, with only one combination and plenty of space to run. They’ve also added an unfamiliar wall, absent in both the first and second rounds, at the end of a blind rollback ’round the lake, for a spooky surprise. The rain has hardly let up all afternoon, and the course, in places, has turned to slippery mud.
“You’ve got to face the track,” says Daniel Bluman, international rider and livestream guest commentator extraordinaire. “The only thing we know with certainty about the future is that it contains our death,” says my book, which I read during the brief intermission before the jump off, putting it aside quickly after those words.
First up is Oliver Robert, who knocks the first of the combination. Next is Kukuk, who runs the course with every intention of winning it, but takes out the same element as Robert. Sophie Hinners has a disappointing round with two down. Next we have Stephan de Freitas Barcha of Brazil, whose horse Cheveux Primavera Imperio Egipcio matches him with a four-word name. He takes it a bit easier and gives us our first triple clear.
The Brazilians on the kiss-and-cry explode in jubilant joy, but that joy is short-lived as Steve Guerdat enters the ring. The rebel Swiss bests the Brazilian by almost two seconds.
Next we have the glamorous paint Ping Pong van de Lentamel with his rider Gerrit Nieberg, but they are taking it easy and saving it for another day.
Then Fuchs.
“We know that Martin is going to leave NOTHING,” says Bluman, channeling his psychic abilities. “Martin is going to be faster.”
I clutch my bare head in my hands while Fuchs shaves two seconds from Guerdat’s time.
Next comes Lillie Keenan and Fasther, but they fail to be fasther or clearther.
And then we have the crowd favorite, that freak stallion with his monster stride, United Touch S, and his rider Richard Vogel. Everyone remembers that catastrophic moment from last year when the pair crossed the last jump in winning time, Vogel’s arm reaching toward the sky in triumph, only to find he’d celebrated too early—the last fence came down.
Is today a moment for redemption? Nope. Two fences gone sends them down the result list to 10th place.
There are two left to challenge the frontrunner Fuchs and I, as a feminist, am rooting for both. First we have 25-year-old Nina Mallevaey of France, who, alongside her generous Canadian sponsor, has been lighting up the world of show jumping with an absolute flurry of spectacular results. Riding like she has nothing to lose, she’s the only one to beat that Fuchs time of 50.29 at 50.01, but it comes at the expense of a pole.
And the last to go, Laura Kraut of the USA with Baloutine, a woman who rides every stride if ever there was one! I am trembling for a victory and the round is good and the round is clear, but the time just lags behind, putting them in second.
I have been screaming at the TV, and now I lay spent and trembling on the wide expanse of my white down comforter, as if I myself had contested the class.
“For Fuchs sake,” I whisper, satisfied.
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