Jens Fredricson is competing as a protagonist at the ‘Italia. Open to Meraviglia – FEI Jumping European Championship Milano 2023’, which will finish tomorrow at the Snai San Siro racecourse.
After providing a decisive contribution to Sweden’s team gold medal victory, tomorrow the 55-year-old Swedish rider will indeed compete in the final for the individual title at the top of the provisional ranking, which he leads with zero penalties.
Despite this, he continues to say that he is ‘only’ the older brother of the more famous and titled Peder (4 Olympic, 2 World and 3 European medals) even though, he is actually the one who has been keeping the family name high in recent times.
And it is precisely this family ‘affaire’ that makes tomorrow’s individual final all the more important for Jens, who has the chance to match his brother, who conquered the gold medal at the 2017 European Championships in Gothenburg.
If he succeeds, and we can be sure he will do everything in his power to do so, Jens and Peder Fredricson would become the second pair of brothers to win a European continental title after the legendary Alvin and Paul Schockemoehle, thus writing another page in the history of equestrian sports.
However, the Swedish rider remains with his feet firmly on the ground. He knows very well that tomorrow, he will have to give his best together with his phenomenal Markan Cosmopolit against formidable opponents.
In the provisional ranking for the European Championship final only open to the ‘top 25’ riders, he is followed by four other top riders such as Switzerland’s Steve Guerdat, Ireland’s Michael Duffy, France’s Olivier Perreau and Great Britain’s Ben Maher, all with less than 4 penalties.
None of them can therefore afford to make a mistake to win a medal, thus making the final of the 2023 European Championships in Milan one of the most exciting ever.
(Jens Fredricson – ph. Massimo Argenziano)
