Peter Charles, who relinquished his European title without a struggle this year when his top horse, La Ina, was sidelined for the championships, has been steadily building up his string of young horses and it was one of these that provided him with a closing day win at the Olympia Christmas show yesterday.
The nine-year-old French mare Dolly is actually one of the more senior members of Charles' string, but she was tuned and ready for victory yesterday when Charles refused to take anything but pole position in a near supersonic Eurosport Christmas Hamper speed stakes.
"I asked her all the questions and she came up with all the answers", a delighted Charles said after collecting the £1,500 winner's cheque. "I was booting it as fast as I could boot it; she couldn't have gone any faster."
Charles, who rode the impressive seven-year-old Nustria into second place in the Volvo World Cup qualifier on Saturday, left some highpowered scalps in his wake, including Rodrigo Pessoa, John Whitaker, Willi Melliger and his Volvo vanquisher Ludger Beerbaum.
But it was Di Lampard that came closest. Riding John Simunovich's mare Flaminka, which was formerly partnered by Paul Darragh, Lampard had her foot to the boards all round the infinitely twisting track, but was still 1.2 seconds off the pace at the finish.
Charles had been hoping for a final day double to finish off his 1997 season in style, but his young star Nustria made an uncharacteristic mistake in the first round of last night's Grand Prix and Charles pulled him up.Incredibly, 16 of the 29, starters did find the key to Bob Ellis' track to provide a marathon jump-off, with four of that number eligible for the 360 bottles of Champagne Taittinger on offer. The top five in Saturday's Volvo world Cup qualifier were all in with a chance of collecting the Taittinger bonus, but only if they could win the Grand Prix. Volvo winner Beerbaum set the early standard, clear in 41.96, but he left room for improvement, eventually sliding to fifth as his compatriot relegated him him in a virtual German whitewash.It looked as though Lars Nieberg, fifth in the Volvo, had done enough to claim the bubbly when the stallion For Pleasure stopped the clock on 39.48, but former British rider Helena Weinberg, who has ridden for Germany since her marriage to Peter Weinberg 11 years ago, found an even shorter way home to snatch the £16,000 first prize and also put the champagne back in the Taittinger vaults yet again.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)