And so we come to our final day in Pforzheim, Germany and the weather is forecast to be beautiful all day with sunshine and a light breeze, perfect for quality jumping - it was a day ordered especially!

The atmosphere in the picturesque German arena was electric as the crowds came streaming through the gates early to get a good vantage point - and crowds were there with the final tally being 7000 people through the gates today and over the three days there were 10,500 people coming through the gates! There is no doubt that this show is growing in stature and it doesn't hurt that the start lists included names of some of the greats in showjumping - Marcus Ehning, Otto Becker, Hugo Simon, Franke Sloothaak to mention just some of the heroes here this weekend.

But our focus has been the eight Australian riders, in Germany to perform in front of some of the selectors and many of the Australian Federation officials, as they do battle over two shows for a place on the Australian Olympic team for Hong Kong.

There was some confusion through the weekend as the exact events which were to be counted for selection were not all together clear but by the time the last horse had jumped in the S&G Goldstadt Cup Grand Prix it "seemed" as if the two rounds which counted for points for the Aussie's were the first round of Saturday's Big Tour and the first round of today's Grand Prix.

Pictured right - you know you are in Germany when you see beer steins and pretzels being consumed at the jumping shows!

Pictured left: -
Matt Williams, for Australia with a lovely young horse, Asgard, did well in the Middle Tour

Now let's discuss the course - after two days of nice flowing, but gentle enough tracks, Frank Rothenberger upped the stakes today - well in fairness they were not going to make it easy to win the euro30,000 brand new Mercedes Benz on offer for the winner of the class!

The 15 effort track saw the average height of the fences sitting at 1.55m to be ridden at 375m/min - and there were some exceptionally technical lines which were going to test the skills of the more experienced riders and were going to cause issue for the less experienced riders and Rothenberger started the questions from fence 1 which saw eight strides to the second fence, a brick wall, on a curve and this alone would cause enough issue.

The other place which was a troublesome area was the treble of oxer/vertical/oxer (fences 6ABC) with four strides to a 1.50m x 1.60m oxer which then took eight strides on a curved line to the open water (fence 8), seven strides on a curved line, to a swedish

oxer which stood at 1.50m x 1.70m wide and is if that wasn't enough to occupy a rider and horse this was followed up with 20.5m to a 1.55m vertical.

This course was not a place to be if you didn't have faith in your horses scope, weren't confident of your horses rideability and weren't afraid to "have a go"!

The draw appeared to be seeded from the previous days class and this saw Adam Mellers and Animate second into the arena following Andreas Brunz who retired after having fences down and realising he was not going to win the Mercedes Benz today!

Adam and Animate - pictured below - did not have the start he would have been planning when fence 1 fell and they followed up by bringing down the bricks of the wall, they had a rub at fence 3, jumped super over fence 4 but again rubbed the fifth fence and had the middle of the treble down after which the horse seemed to pick up his pace and left all the remaining fences standing to finish with 12 faults in 72.82secs on the 77 sec track.

This class was not going to be easy and by the time the next Aussie, Paul Athanasoff entered the arena at number 10 there were no clears and the best result to this stage was a very fast 4 faults from Katharina Offel for the Ukraine in 70.81secs - but there were 46 entries so a long way to go!

Paul Athanasoff and Wirragulla Niklaus showed what a strong combination they are when they flew over the first fence, made the brick wall at fence two look like a fun game and then continued to skip

The Dutch rider, Robert Vos, following Paul Athanasoff opted for retirement when he realised the Benz was out of his reach too but then the German crowd erupted with glee when the first clear round came from their own Lars Nieberg and Levito.

Florian Meyer zu Hartum, also for Germany was another who opted to retire after 3 fences fell rather saving his 9 year old horse for another day.

The crowd showed their appreciation for the riders who had the grace to retire their horses, rather than risking breaking their hearts, with enthusiastic applause.

Coming in as the 15th combination, the third of the 8 strong Aussie contingent, Vicki Roycroft and Noblewood Park Blatini. This was another Aussie combination to have a bad start when fence 1 fell, but they managed to get over the brick wall with fence 3 falling. After this things cleared up a little with fences 4 and 5 coming up easy but Vicki and Blatini also fell victim to the treble when the final part fell but after this everything stayed in place with the occasional rub causing deep breaths - but they came through the finish flags carrying 12 faults, well within the time at 72.04secs.

Franke and Legurio, an 8 year old gelding by Landclassic out of a Coronado mare jump unconventionally in a bitless bridle.

There is no question of the young horses ability and desire to jump - and the crowd went wild as they came over the final fence with all the furniture in place and the time very right at 70.45secs. and we now had a jump off guaranteed.