This win means the world

Robert Whitaker began the day repairing fencing and finished with one of the greatest wins of his life. He reveals the inside story to winning the King George V Gold Cup

- Robert Whitaker

TO win the Longines King George V Gold Cup is amazing; to jump the only double clear is something in itself. But to do all that on a horse we’ve had for so long, who was bred by my dad, means the world. 

But just a month ago, I had a very different plan for riding the King’s Cup. My other horse Evert jumps very well at Hickstead and was fifth in the class last year, but he picked up a small injury at the Derby meeting in June and won’t be back for a month or so.

Vermento has been jumping well though, including on the Nations Cup team at Falsterbo, which was great preparation for Hickstead. So I didn’t jump the grand prix there, gave him a week off and brought him to the Royal International.

Hickstead is a special ring and when the horses are confident in there, they jump much better, so I wanted to get Vermento in the arena as much as possible and I actually jumped both five star-classes on the opening day, which is unusual.

I used the first class to get him nice and relaxed before the big class, the first of his two 1.50m qualifiers, where he finished seventh. Then he had one down in Saturday’s qualifier, but he was giving me a really good feeling. In the meantime, I’d watched Great Britain’s incredible Nations Cup win on Friday, with my dad on the team, so that set a very good mood for the weekend!

I live close by, near Horley, and on Sunday morning I actually had lots of jobs to do at home – feeding the young ones in the field, fixing some fencing and riding the younger horses – so the big class was far from the front of my mind. I left for the show at about midday ahead of the class starting at 2.15pm, but I was drawn late, so I didn’t jump till 3.30pm.