FEI Jumping World Cup: Epaillard wins Lyon by 0.03sec

Three hundredths of a second separated the winner from the runner-up in Lyon on Sunday, and they fell on the side of the home rider. Julien Epaillard and Le Coultre de Muze stopped the clock at 38.17 seconds to take the second Western European League leg of the season in front of a French crowd, with Richard Vogel and Cloudio agonisingly close on 38.20.

The jump-off was not a small one. Forty combinations started over a track built by Spain's Santiago Varela, and fourteen of them came back for the second round, which is a high enough proportion to tell you the first-round course asked questions without punishing those who answered them. Edouard Schmitz and Gamin van't Naastveldhof set the early standard as the first pair to break forty seconds, finishing third on 38.31 and leaving the podium covered by fourteen hundredths of a second in total.

For Epaillard the result closes a loop that has taken a year to draw. He took over the ride on Le Coultre de Muze, a 15-year-old Belgian Warmblood stallion by Presley Boy out of Geneve de Muze, from compatriot Philippe Rozier in November 2025, and this was their first five-star Grand Prix victory together. "We had to get to know each other," he said of the partnership. "The beginning wasn't all that easy; we took it step by step."

Lyon in particular suits him. He won here in 2022 and finished second in both 2023 and 2024, a record that makes this less an upset than a correction. "It's very important for us to have good results in Lyon," he said, calling Longines Equita Lyon one of the best shows of the year, and adding a line that frames the rest of his winter: "The World Cup Final is an objective for me. I always try to show up with horses in top form."

That objective is what gives these autumn qualifiers their weight. The Western European League is a points-gathering exercise rather than a series of isolated grands prix, and after two legs the table has Martin Fuchs in front on 23 points, with Epaillard and Max Kuhner level behind him on 20 apiece. Kuhner won the season opener in Oslo, Epaillard has now won Lyon, and Fuchs leads without having won either, which is the clearest possible illustration of how consistency pays in this format.

Fuchs did not leave Lyon empty-handed. He won the Equita Masters, worth 105,500 euros, aboard Fave d'Authuit, an 11-year-old Selle Francais gelding by Cornet Obolensky previously campaigned by Erynn Ballard, from Penelope Leprevost with Hileklaire Un Prince and Ireland's Mark McAuley on Clooney van Spalbeek. Sunday's World Cup qualifier itself carried 308,600 euros.

The week was busy well beyond France. In Rabat, Ciaran Nallon won the CSI5* 1.50m on Christians Carado, going first in the jump-off and posting 39.65 seconds that nobody could beat, ahead of Emanuele Gaudiano and Christian Ahlmann. In Spain, Chloe Winchester won the CSI2* 1.35m at Vejer de la Frontera with ABC Saving Grace in 31.26 seconds, while Max Routledge and Millie Allen both placed third in bigger classes and Ireland took the Nations Cup.

The dressage ring offered its own talking point. Charlotte Fry was second in the Grand Prix Special at CDI3* Opglabbeek on 69.256 percent with Nalegro, an eight-year-old KWPN stallion, after placing fourth in the Grand Prix on 67.674. Jeroen Devroe won the Special with Jackpot on 70.532 percent and Camille Judet-Cheret was third on Donaustern 12. For a horse of that age to be scoring near 70 in a Special is the kind of detail that gets noted now and quoted in two years' time.

The league moves on to Verona next, and the shape of the season is already clear: no rider has built a cushion, the leader has won nothing, and the man who just won at home still has ground to make up. There are a lot of qualifiers left in which to sort that out.