August 9, 2026 
It was a nine rider jump off.
First to go in the Rolex Grand Prix of Ireland was Dutch rider Arne Van Heel aboard everyone’s new crush: the up-and-coming 10-year-old stallion Keaton HV.
Keaton HV, sired by Kannan, who scored a nice double clear while looking like the prettiest thing imaginable and the horse absolutely everyone wants. Lust appeared in spectators eyes, drool ran down their chins, and shouts of “No fair!” were heard from riders far and wide.
But Van Heel, despite having the dreamiest stallion of the competition, was not Jordan Coyle, an Irishman with something to prove, which, if he didn’t prove it this week, he never will: over the course of the last five days, he walked away with five wins!
It was this Coyle, second to go, that stepped up with 15-year-old Chaccolino to put our beautiful Keaton down. He beat their time by more than two seconds, clocking in at 39.27.
The Irish crowd was exultant, but next to go was Swiss phenom Steve Guerdat, who, he said later in the press conference, was enduring a “horrible week.”
Not as horrible as last year, however, when, injured, he “watched it from my bed at home.”
(As an aside, this is not at all a bad way of watching it—take it from this reporter, who not only watched the whole GP from her bed, but is currently penning this article from that same locale.)
But if Guerdat was having a bad week, someone who was not was his trusty partner 12-year-old Albführen’s Iashin Sitte, who went double clear in the Nations Cup on Friday and had been the third clear in today’s Grand Prix.
I suspected Jordan might have a problem, after seeing Iashin Sitte in Falsterbo doing a rollback so tight it resembled a dressage pirouette (and yet he still took only third!).
And a rollback is what we had here in this deceptively-simple-looking jump off. It was a nearly 360-degree circle, but unlike Falsterbo where all you were facing after such a tight turn was a vertical, course designer Alan Wade had given the horse-and-riders a nice meaty oxer facing the distracting crowded stands.
There was little room for error on this one—get the distance wrong at the speed you needed to be competitive, and there was little chance for a double clear round.
Our sexy boy Keaton handled it with finesse (get me semen!) while Chaccolino needed a convincing ride.
But Iashin?
“His rideability really helps me,” says Guerdat. “I know it doesn’t matter how short I turn, he really stays focused and I can take a lot of risk in those turns.
“It doesn’t always turn out,” he adds humbly.
But this time it does. It looks deep, it looks lucky, and it looks clear.
Guerdat and Iashin cross the finish in the lead at 37.81.
Third to go in a jump off of nine, and I’m searching for who could beat them.
The obvious answer is Richard Vogel, currently fighting to rise from World Number Two to World Number One (incidentally, World Number One was in this class with Greya, but scored an unfortunate four faults on the last of the triple to deprive us all of their presence in this jump off).
But what’s he gonna have to do to catch that time? Whatever it is, he’s gonna try to do it, because one thing Vogel isn’t is someone who doesn’t give it a go every single time he goes in the ring.
I’m reminded of what Leopoldo Palacios, course designer at Spruce Meadows for over three decades, said in the final episode of Faultless: The Riders, Their Horses, and the Pursuit of Excellence: “It’s a competition. It’s not a show. We are not exhibitors. We are competitors.”
But why we gotta be one or the other? Now I’m reminded of what Cardi B said in her 2017 breakout hit “Bodak Yellow”: “Hit the store, I can get ’em both, I don’t wanna choose!”
Yeah, I don’t want to choose either, so give me both a showman and a competitor: give me Richard Vogel. And give me the grey stallion CLOUDIO, which I always spell in all caps because to me that’s the way his name is spelled.
He’s up from the first moment, 0.22 seconds ahead just crossing the start line at a mighty gallop.
But then it comes, that rollback, that meaty oxer, that distance so hard to find when you’re spinning like a top in a complete circle! And he hits the jump 0.11 seconds ahead of Guerdat, but the thing is, he actually HITS the jump, so deep it’s like he’s in a submersible in the Mariana Trench.
So yeah, that counts as four faults and all we have left is Rodrigo Pessoa, who also gives it a blazing-fast go and runs into similar trouble.
That leave Guerdat atop the podium, followed by Jordan Coyle, and rounding it out with Van Heel and the lovely, lovely Keaton HV!
