December 22, 2025 
The 2025 season was coming down to the wire for Max Kühner.
The Austrian Olympian who took 7th individually in the 2024 Paris Games has a reputation for consistency at the pinnacle of the sport. In fact, Kühner has also earned individual top-10 finishes at the 2022 World Championships in Herning, the 2018 World Equestrian Games in Tryon, and FEI Jumping World Cup™ Finals in 2019, 2022, 2024, and 2025.
Yet despite also notching a 1.60m 5* Grand Prix win every year since 2021, this season was proving to be a bit of a sticking point for Kühner. The Austrian rider recently earned a 1.55m win in the UBS Challenge speed class in Geneva, and he took second place in both the 5* Grand Prix Audi in Bordeaux last February, and the Grand Prix Hermès in Paris in March.
But he had yet to scale the top of a 5* 1.60m podium. That is, until Sunday afternoon in the Longines FEI World Cup™ qualifier at the London International Horse Show, where Kühner and the 12-year-old Irish Sport Horse gelding, EIC Cooley Jump the Q, earned the top spot in a field of 37 competitors.
“EIC Cooley Jump the Q was really with me today. I could feel what he was asking for, and he was listening to me, so I could go fast and we were still always connected, in a good way,” Kühner said. “It was a really good feeling today!”
As the first Austrian rider ever to win this class, Kühner’s foot-perfect jump-off round stopped the clock at 33.94 seconds, besting a red-hot Donald Whitaker (GBR) and his Europeans team silver medal-winning partner, Millfield Colette, on a time of 35.52 seconds. Ireland’s Cian O’Connor was third with new ride, Chatolinue PS, on 37.24 seconds.
Interestingly, this is the second top finish in just a matter of weeks for both partnerships, who also filled out the podium in the Trophée de Genève at CHI Geneva on December 12th—with Whitaker and Millfield Colette taking the win, and O’Connor and Chatolinue finishing third.
“It’s a great testament to Chatolinue and all my background team—he jumped so well. There were only five of us in the jump-off, but I really wanted to be clear and make sure of it,” O’Connor explained. “We’ve got a big target ahead next year with the World Championships, and we haven’t done many indoor shows, so I’m really, really happy with him.”
Whitaker was equally enthusiastic about his partner of three years, the 12-year-old OS mare Millfield Colette. “It’s incredible. I’ve been coming here all my life, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” he said after the class. “Okay, I didn’t win, but it’s probably as good as winning!
“I’m absolutely delighted. [Millfield Colette] jumped her heart out again, and she just fights for every single second she’s in there.”
Alan Wade’s (IRL) unrelenting, 14-effort track featured one related distance after another, with a tight time allowed that offered few places on course for respite. Five riders came away with time faults, with a further five combinations cracking the code and punching their tickets into the jump-off.
Along with Kühner, Whitaker, and O’Connor, Donald’s cousin, Robert Whitaker, qualified for the shortened course but pulled a rail in the jump-off with Vermento. A similar fate befell France’s Penelope Leprevost with Baloubet de Talma.
While Kühner said that he had faith in his horse’s foot speed in the jump-off, he was concerned about how the enthusiastic, indoor crowds would affect the sensitive gelding. “He has a lot of temper and is easily affected by this great atmosphere in London. But today, he was really with me—he was speaking to me, if you like,” Kühner explained.
Paired together since 2019, this is the second, career 5* 1.60m victory for Kühner and EIC Cooley Jump the Q, who previously took home the 5* Longines Grand Prix in Basel St. Jakobshalle, Switzerland in 2023. With this win, Kühner has propelled himself to the top of the Longines FEI Jumping World Cup™ Western European League standings with 45 points.
Nearly midway through the qualifying season, Willem Greve (NED) sits in second on 40 points, with Richard Vogel (GER) in third on 36 points. Yuri Mansur (BRA), Ben Maher (GBR), and Kevin Staut (FRA) occupy the fourth, fifth, and sixth positions, respectively, on 29 points apiece.
Next up: the series moves on to Mechelen, Belgium (December 30) for the final qualifier of the 2025 year.
