29 December 2024
Dries Degrieck takes victory in Mechelen’s first round
The 7th leg of the 2024/2025 FEI World Cup™ Driving season takes place during the 42nd edition of Jumping Mechelen. This afternoon was the first competition where the enthusiastic crowd cheered on the seven four-in-hand drivers competing for the win. Belgium's rising star Dries Degrieck is having a fabulous season so far, and took the first place today as well.As announced earlier, the Driving competition was made even more special this year at the Nekkerhal. The competition is sponsored by the Belgian National Lottery and the VLP, therefore the balls on the cones all look like lottery numbers on this nice and fast course designed by Johan Jacobs. The two wild card Drivers of this leg are home Drivers Glenn Geerts and Tom Stokmans. Glenn started off with a nice and clear round in a time of 131.75. That put him in the 4th place on the first day. It was a first time for Tom Stokmans, who made his World Cup debut in front of the Belgian public. Tom had a few knockdowns and ended his round on a time of 163.06, which meant the 7th place for him today.
It does not happen very often that two Drivers have the exact same time, but it happened with Jerome Voutaz who finished on 131.75, exactly the same time as Glenn Geerts. However, two knockdowns for Voutaz meant that his final time was 139.75, which was good for the 6th place. Germany’s Georg von Stein put down a nice and nearly clear performance today, only one knockdown fell on the very last obstacle. He finished 5th with 139.08. Despite one ball, Bram Chardon managed to qualify for the drive-off with a very fast time of 127.60. He finished only 0.15 seconds ahead of Gleen Geerts. Dries Degrieck was next in the arena. Driving in front of your home crowd makes it even more special for the Drivers, and it certainly helped Dries, who stayed clear and drove an extremely fast round and qualified for the drive-off with the best time (123.12). Last to go in the Christmas Arena was Koos de Ronde, who also had a knockdown, but managed to qualify to the top 3.
The top 3 drivers from the first round started the drive-off from zero. Koos de Ronde was very fast and his original time was great (125.98), however two unfortunate knockdowns meant that he ended on the second place today. Bram Chardon was next, who had an unlucky mistake. After obstacle nr. 4, on the turn he has knocked down obstacle nr. 8 before driving it. The ground jury had to ring the bell and 10 seconds and 4 penalties were added to his time for the rebuild and the ball. For Bram this meant the third place for today. His time however was very fast, without the penalties he would be only 0.92 seconds off Dries’ winning time. The season so far has been great for Belgium’s young star Dries Degrieck. The 29-year-old Driver has won two legs until now (Lyon and Stockholm) and so far, it looks pretty good for him in Mechelen too. For sure the pressure is on, and all Drivers will analyze today’s competition for tomorrow, how they could be better and faster on Johan Jacobs’ course. However, today’s best performer was Dries Degrieck again, who drove two extremely fast and most importantly clear rounds for the win. Compared to the first round, he managed to improve more than two seconds in the drive-off which took place on the same course. Tomorrow’s second competition will be the closing event of Jumping Mechelen 2024 and also the last Driving competition of 2024. The World Cup round starts at 10.00PM and can be followed live on FEI Youtube.
Dries Degrieck in London last week
Photo: Swingletree Photography
