Allen’s €60,000 second prize

BERTRAM ALLEN (22) collected €60,000 for second place with Molly Malone, while the Irish-bred and owned Suma’s Zorro galloped to victory and scooped the €99,000 top prize for Egypt’s Sameh El Dahan in the Longines Global Champions Tour in Paris on Saturday.

Allen (pictured) was first of the 11 to go against the clock in the €300,000 competition and he set a super-fast target in 36.86 seconds.

However, second-last into the ring, El Dahan snatched the win from him with the ride of a lifetime on the 14-year-old mare. Bred by Kilkenny’s Susan Lanigan-O’Keeffe and Marily Power – whose Suma prefix is legendary – Zorro is owned by Antrim’s Joanne Sloan-Allen and has been competed on by the Egyptian rider for the last seven years. They never enjoyed success like this before and the crowd around the arena – located in the shadow of the iconic Eiffel Tower – gave the horseand-rider partnership a standing ovation.

Allen knows what that feels like because he was the youngest-ever Global Champions winner when coming out on top at the same venue in 2015 at the age of 19, riding his 17-year-old nowretired super-stallion Romanov.