Portugal had never won a European endurance title. In Jullianges it won two
Rodrigo Buinho, 18, from Estremoz, took individual gold at the European Junior and Young Rider Championship in France. Manuel Maria Pereira finished third and the squad took the team title.
Twenty-two nations rode at Jullianges, in central France, and by the end of the European Junior and Young Rider Endurance Championship the Portuguese flag had gone up twice. Portugal took the team title and the individual gold in the same weekend. Neither had ever been won before.
The individual belongs to Rodrigo Buinho, an 18-year-old from Estremoz. Manuel Maria Pereira completed the podium in third, which means two of the three best young endurance riders on the continent are Portuguese. Carolina Balsas, from Elvas, came seventh aboard Alsila at an average of 20.4 kilometres an hour. António Maria Avó and Zoe Pedro made up the squad.
The bar this cleared
The scale of it is easier to see with the old benchmark in view. Portugal’s best team result at a European endurance championship had been a bronze, won at home in Rio Frio back in 2016. A decade later the squad did not merely improve on it. It brought home two medals of a colour the country had never held in this discipline.
Endurance is among the least televised equestrian sports and among the hardest to finish. Riders cover long distances in stages, and the horse faces compulsory veterinary inspections along the route, with elimination at any checkpoint if heart rate or gait falls outside the limits. Speed alone wins nothing. You have to arrive with a horse fit enough to pass the final check.
The reaction from Belém
President António José Seguro congratulated the squad on Saturday in a message that leaned on Portugal’s equestrian tradition. That tradition is genuine and very old, but it rarely converts into continental titles in this particular discipline, which is part of why the result surprised people outside the sport.
The generation is young, and the federation had said before the championship that it was sending its largest ever delegation to a European endurance event. It did, and it came back with the championship. After a Portuguese sporting summer that opened with the Supertaça in Coimbra, this one arrived from the quiet end of the calendar. Full results are published on the International Equestrian Federation site.
By Vasco Almada
Image: Ruud Overes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0), illustrative of the discipline
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