September 20, 2025 
It’s Friday night in St. Tropez, where the final qualifying leg of the Longines League of Nations is set to take place on Sunday, but tonight is the five-star Grand Prix with 49 competitors from around the world.
St. Tropez, a place I’ve never been. A place that was nothing but a sleepy fishing village until 1956, when Brigitte Bardot came to town in the film And God Created Woman and made “no effort to restrain her natural sensuality.” She rode a bike, sunbathed nude, pouted, danced, walked around barefoot, slugged brandy, and pressed her body against a variety of men. Someone ends up shot and St. Tropez ended up a hotspot for jet-setters and celebrities.
The course is set by Olympic course designer Gregory Bodo and it starts out a rather messy affair. The first round gives us no less than eight retirements. Rails litter the course, time faults accumulate. I find myself more interested in the shots of the VIP, where the camera lands between rounds.
Women toss their hair, men wear patterned shirts. At one point, I see a pair of men standing at a table adorned with various whiskey bottles, holding tasting glasses. I remember Dinard, where I had to send out of the VIP tent for a scant dram of whiskey, which took ages to arrive and was not very satisfying when it did.
“I must travel with a flask,” I think while the last line, a vertical-oxer-vertical triple catches another horse-and-rider with a clattering display of lumber.
But all is not lost. We end the first round with nine clears, which include riders Laura Kraut, Nina Mallevaey, Jeanne Sadran, Simon Delestre, and Brazil’s Stephan de Freitas Barcha with Dinozo Imperio Egipcio. And, of course, Karl Cook and Caracole de la Roque.
The second round brings back the top 12 from the first round—but this time we’re taking 13, as Jeanne Sadran and Simon Delestre leave the first round tied in 8th place with matching times of 75.84 seconds.
The second round is built the way I like it, with individual jumps and looping rollbacks and long gallops that make it an exciting test of speed and precision. At the end, Bodo has stuck in a fragile pink skinny so there’s no taking that last jump for granted.
Laura Kraut and Bisquetta are the first to come in with a convincing performance, taking the course without pause and notching a time of 41.76, which beats Jeanne Sadran’s current top time by nearly 3 seconds.
It is only two rounds later when I develop a new crush. Who is this Dinozo Imperio Epigcio? He looks on screen like a fat little pony, all belly with skinny legs. But watch this guy fling himself up and over the jumps, flying to the last, getting a little deep, but avoiding knocking the skinny—and he’s beaten Kraut’s time by .17.
In the second round, the horse-and-riders come back in reverse order of their scores, so the fastest is saved for lastest. And we all know who that is, that God-created Caracole.
There she is. No one would call her pretty, exactly, but she looks proud. I love the way she enters a ring with her head up (she goes that way too), looking around with bright eyes and ears forward, as if taking stock of the course she’s about to tackle. She’s in a hackamore and her lower lip flops loosely.
In France, where she was bred and started her career with Julien Epaillard, there is always a feeling among the crowd that she belongs to them.
(“I bet there’s no one right now attending the Whiskey Tasting Station,” I think. “I bet anyone could sneak in there right about now…” Damn remote reportage!)
And then there’s Karl. That dude don’t mind laying it out. That dude don’t flinch at taking a course at top speed. Watching Caracole, I get a feeling like the jumps are beneath her, not just physically, but almost, perhaps, spiritually. Fly at that last skinny without a pause, well why not? This chick knows how to be careful.
And they’ve done it. Beaten the Brazilian—I’ve already forgotten my new crush—by .53. Still in the 41 Club, as I write in my little notebook, at 41.06, but hey—they made it look easy.
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