October 12, 2025 
Elegance is an attitude. And Harrie Smolders delivers like a postman.
I keep being reminded of the former as I watch the Longines Global Champions Tour, streaming live from the Circo Massimo in Rome, Italy. And I am instructed in the latter as I watch Smolders and his equine partner Monaco take the top prize in Sunday’s Grand Prix.
“Elegance is an attitude” is the tagline for Longines, the watchmaker whose name and logo is ubiquitous in our sport of show jumping. It appears on the livestream screen and is reflected in the white and navy that swathes the arena that’s been built in the ancient chariot-racing stadium, which was the largest in ancient Rome.
This is my first time covering, as journaliste, a GCT Grand Prix, and I am wondering about my attitude. Is it elegant? I am awash in insecurity, even though I am absent from the venue, watching from my bed in Wellington, Florida.
I’m surrounded by books, as usual, piled up around me, and I’ve managed to spill espresso on my white comforter, though I swore to myself, as I perched the small cup on a large text on the history of the United States constitution, that I would not do this.
A drone swings over Rome, showing a beautiful view of the river Tiber.
The ring looks small, or perhaps I should call it intimate, and gets its revenge for its temporary status by employing a lot of skinnies. There are also a lot of plants, everywhere in the arena, even two very tall ones placed under the third jump, an oxer. I’ve never seen that before. I think it must be excessively spooky, but aside from the third horse in, who attempted a stop too late and landed on top of them, no one seems really bothered.
Rome is the 14th leg of a 16-leg GCT season, with a 17th stop the championship in Prague. This they call the “Super Grand Prix.” Throughout the season, individual riders accumulate points based on their performances in the Grand Prix, in what the tour calls the “Ultimate Individual Challenge.” The rider with the most points at the end of the season gets crowned the “Longines Global Champions Tour Champion of Champions.”
All these fancy titles are beginning to convert me to the GCT’s way of looking at things. It’s not elegant, exactly—it’s over the top.
But that’s not all. You can win a “Golden Ticket,” a term originating in the Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, to the Longines Global Champions Tour Super Grand Prix at the Global Champions Playoffs in Prague by winning one of the stages of the tour, which honestly seems a more meritorious way of handing those things out than randomly finding one hiding in a chocolate bar.
You also get to wear an armband if you’re head of the LGCT GP Standings. This position is currently held by Gilles Thomas, Belgian rider, aged 27.
But will he hold on and secure this title for the season? That is the question, as world-ranked rider number 4, Christian Kukuk, has a chance of surpassing him. But if Kukuk does not beat Thomas in today’s GP, Thomas has the season title, Champion of Champions, locked down.
I might as well tell you now, for this is not where the suspense in this story lies, that Thomas has secured the title, for he threw down a beautiful clear on his 9-year-old mare Qalista DN, while Kukuk was taken out by the first of the double on 15-year-old Olympic champion Checker 47.
As an aside, I must mention that there is no rider whose words I pay any attention to at all other than the melancholic Christian Kukuk. When my editor tells me to hunt for quotes from riders, I always refuse, finding that they have little of interest to say. It’s all “this many strides to 3” or “I went for the six at 11” or bland compliments to the show organizers.
But let Kukuk get a rail or two and he will wax philosophic on his inadequacies. Today, after acknowledging that the results are “not a matter of bad luck,” but rather of a “mistake of the rider,” he expresses “disappointment in myself.” He can only hope to vie for second place in the Champion of Champions standings.
I too love to meditate on my inadequacies, and I am still wondering, at the half-way point of the Grand Prix, if I can adopt an attitude of elegance.
“A cat is elegant,” I think, and turn to my feline, whose arm is stretched out languorously in front of her. “Teach me to be you,” I say to her.
I’m thinking. Languor is elegant, and I am either afflicted with a frenetic sort of awkward energy or ensconced in the sort of laziness I would characterize as greasy and obese, rather than the “pleasant inertia” of languor’s definition.
I leave my bedroom to watch my other cat on the patio. She stalks rather than walks, with a rhythmic slowness. “You stalk rather than walk,” I write down in my little journalist notebook. “And when you take off,” I continue writing, thinking of past observations, “you run with the speed of a shot from a rifle.”
I settle at my makeup table. I am fantasizing of joining the GCT next season, jetsetting around the world. I use my thickest foundation, I verily slather it on. I am alone, aside from these companion animals and 23 horses in the stable. I have no intention of seeing any human at all today, but I think that elegant people always worry about the state of their maquillage and do not neglect it.
At the drag break, we have five clears. Among them is a rider I have never seen before, Gregory Cottard of France. His horse wears hardly any bridle at all and no martingale. Her name is Cocaine. She’s white and looks frankly beautiful in her near-nakedness. Cottard believes in “balance and well-being” and is great friends with his inflatable exercise ball. I feel like I know him very well after only a few short minutes on Instagram, where he has placed the camera pelvis-level in order to demonstrate a series of thrusts that must be good for core strength.
In the second half, we add another five to our assemblage of clear rounds. Among them is the only Italian clear of the day, Guilia Martinengo Marquet. Her smile in front of the hometown crowd could rival the wattage of Esmeralda 7, the giant solar power project in the Nevada desert calculated to generate enough energy to power 2 million homes, but which was recently canceled by the Trump administration in order to encourage more coal mining.
The jump-off course is set. We have two nearly 360-degree rollbacks and a long gallop to a last oxer. And we have 10 to contend it.
Fourth to go is Smolders on 16-year-old Monaco. They win the day with tight rollbacks and a devil-may-care gallop to the last. Their time is 34.27. “He’s almost like a postman,” intones the commentator. “Guaranteed delivery.”
But he has competition in Gilles Thomas, who almost wins it on a horse seven years younger, coming in second with a time of 34.41.
Guilia Martinengo Marquet is not going to go down without a fight, but down she goes, as her balls-to-the-wall run to the third jump ends in a misjudged distance and fall (both horse and rider are okay).
The next to put up a challenge is Dutch rider Maikel van der Vleuten, who clocks a time of 34.84 on his horse Beauville Z NOP to round out the podium.
Exercise-ball fanatic Cottard ends two seconds behind the others in fourth.
And that finishes the LGCT Grand Prix of Roma. It is Smolders’ third win of the LGCT season (he also won in Valkenswaard and Cannes) and third Golden Ticket (are you allowed to give extra ones out to friends?*) and he has managed to edge out Kukuk (can someone get a comment from him please?) to slide into second place in the Champion of Champions standings.
*Editor’s note: No. You cannot. If the winner has secured a slot to the Super Grand Prix, the ticket is awarded to the next highest placing rider not already qualified. In this case that’s Maikel van der Vleuten.)
