Ireland’s Shane Sweetnam has won Friday’s Final of the 1m50 CaptiveOne Advisors Classic with Indra Van De Oude Heihoef at the Winter Equestrian Festival in Florida.

Sweetnam held on from Mexico’s Eugenio Garza Perez whose late effort on Armani SL Z was one-sixth of a second slower.

“She has a big heart, and she’s super, super careful,” said the Cork rider, who had made this event a target for his mount. “She really does not want to hit the jumps, and obviously when you’re going at that speed in the jump-off, you need a special horse to keep the jumps up.”

“This is probably the best WEF I’ve had, between grand prix wins and being consistently in the ribbons with a good team of horses and owners behind me. This is my last class of the season, so this win is just the cherry on top. It’s a great way to finish off.”

Darragh Kenny put in the second-fastest jump-off round but four faults at the last fence meant he had to settle for eighth place on Scarlett Du Sart Z. However Kenny did enough to keep his place at the top of the CaptiveOne series leaderboard for this year’s festival.

Mike Dunne