Jaeger-LeCoultre partner and official timekeeper of Global Champions Tour
The Global Champions Tour (GCT) has a simple maxim: ‘The Best in Show Jumping’.
This weekend, horses, riders and the audience gathered in Valkenswaard, Holland at Stal Tops, the home of the GCT President and Founder Jan Tops. This was the third show this year where the GCT and Jaeger-LeCoultre joined forces. The Manufacture with its 178 year history of providing exclusive, unique, hand assembled watches has agreed to become the official timekeeper.
The connection between horse and rider as a team creating an elegant and dynamic partnership in the precision sport of show jumping, melds well with the work ethic of Jaeger-LeCoultre whose commitment to the same principles of elegance and the precise delivery of an accurate and hand assembled timepiece.
On Saturday, company CEO, Jerome Lambert, presented the winner of the GCT Grand Prix of the Netherlands with a specially engraved Reverso (Reverso Grande Taille with a special dedicated engraving). America’s Olympic Gold Medallist Laura Kraut earned this award with the help of her great equine partner “Cedric” (horse name).
With that in mind Jan Tops, a former championship rider and gold medallist, devised a series in which the world’s top 30 ranked riders are invited to jump in nine shows at some of the most beautiful venues in sport. Rio De Janeiro, Cannes, Monaco, Estoril, Hamburg and Valencia are already established partners in this endeavour and in 2010, Chantilly and Turin were added to the roster. All of these events are designated as 5***** by the FEI (International Equestrian Federation) which means championship level sport.
The action and the power of equestrian athletes competing over fences up to 1.60m in height draws huge crowds where ever it goes, 30,000 in Valkenswaard for example. And as well as the horse loving public, the glitterati attend in droves. And some of them even compete. This weekend, watched by her uncle HRH Prince Albert of Monaco, Charlotte Casiraghi and tennis superstar Martina Hingis were involved in the GCT Special Invitational competition for amateur riders that is run alongside the main event.
