Yuri Mansur and the fabulous mare Miss Blue-Saint Blue Farm finished atop a field of the world’s best riders in the Rolex Grand Prix of Rome Sunday, as the show at the Piazza di Sienna wrapped up with a spectacular competition.
“She was born for this job,” Mansur said about the daughter of Chacco Blue, who also was a winner in Hamburg, Germany last year and in Fontainebleau, France, last month. The victory for the veteran of Brazil’s teams came, appropriately, on the day after his forty-sixth birthday.
Yuri Mansur won the Rolex Grand Prix of Rome with Miss Blue-Saint Blue Farm.
“This is a mare from Brazil, she didn’t have any experience when she left there, but in three years since 2022, she has given me my best wins,” said Yuri.
“And I feel it’s just the beginning, we’ve had some bad luck with health problems, but now she is good again and she is doing an unbelievable job.”
He is just the second rider from Brazil to win the grand prix. Rodrigo Pessoa, who was sixteenth on Sunday with Major Tom, took the title in 2009.
Yuri rode for the first time only at the age of 14. The Olympian gives credit to working with Belgium’s Ludo Philippaerts as both a rider and groom.
“He helped get me started…so a big part of my journey came through Ludo. I bought a barn in 2017 in The Netherlands and now Holland is home for us”, he explained.
Remarkably, his jump-off didn’t go as planned.
“What almost made me lose was I spoke with McLain Ward, and he told me to start from the right for number one. And then at the last moment, I changed to the left, and I didn’t get a good shot to number one, so I added one stride and that meant I had to risk as much as I could,” Yuri explained.
“I had planned seven strides, but I did eight from fence one to two, and that made me just risk as much as I could in the rollbacks. I had two really blind distances but I kept following and we worked it out.”.
His time of 35.65 seconds was just 0.11 seconds ahead of Ireland’s Cian O’Connor and Iron Man in the second round of the test designed by Uliano Vezziani on the broad green field, surrounded by thousands of spectators in the heart of the Eternal City.
It was the third 5-star runner-up finish for Cian with the steel-gray Zangersheide gelding, but he wound up winning the leading rider trophy named after Italy’s greatest horsemen, brothers Piero and Raimondo D’Inzeo.
Cian said his mount “hasn’t much experience against the clock and he’s such an expressive jumper, he’s not maybe as quick as some of the others because he takes his time at his fences but that’s something we’re working on.”
France’s Nina Mallevaey, a rising star at 25 years old, finished third in 36.35 seconds with Dynastie de Beaufour.
“I know I have an amazing horse that is really generous. We did our first five-star Grand Prix about a year ago and I think we have built a great relationship together,” said Nina, who began her international career with Julien Epaillard and is now trained by Helena Stormanns.
“It’s my first time here in Rome and since the beginning of the week she’s been enjoying that arena and loving to be here. This was a dream of mine to come here so I’m very, very happy.”
A favorite of the Italian crowd, Giulia Martinengo Marquet, was galloping toward the sixth fence of blue planks with Delta Del’Isle, as a member of the course design team was adjusting a plank that had blown down in the wind. She had to turn away while the clock was stopped and the crowd gasped. However, she was able to finish the course quickly with only one knockdown and qualify for the second round. Giulia finished ninth.
The second round’s fastest effort by far, in 33.39 seconds, belonged to the USA’s Laura Kraut on Bisquetta. But a knockdown at the first element of the Rolex double simply meant she was the quickest of the four faulters, winding up sixth.
Karl Cook, Laura’s teammate on the winning Nations Cup squad Friday, missed his opportunity for the 125,000 Euro ($142,000) first prize and the honor of back-to-back wins in the class when Caracole de La Roque slipped out behind on the turn to the the third fence, the imposing green Rolex wall.
He made a valiant effort to recoup but ended his tour of the course with two knockdowns. That meant he did not qualify for the second round, limited to the top 12 of the 45 starters, and wound up twenty-second.
The USA’s McLain Ward and his Olympic team silver medal mount, Ilex, retired after dropping two rails, joining the list of six other riders who did the same. The fourth member of the American Nations Cup squad, Lillie Keenan, had two rails and a time fault with Argan de Bellard in the first round to wind up thirtieth.
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