In Lanaken, Niamh McEvoy claimed the six-year-old world title with Easy Peasy Indebus Z, at the end of a twenty-horse jump-off where clear minds and a heavy foot on the accelerator were required. But behind the Irish rider’s 40.85 seconds lies another victory. That of Dennis Van Tiburg and Jasmien Thiry, the breeders of the son of Emerald van ’t Ruytershof. Because a World Championship can sometimes be won in forty seconds. But it begins several years earlier, in a field.

Twenty in the jump-off, one champion

In Lanaken, people officially come looking for young horse world titles. Unofficially, they also come to lose a few years of life expectancy.

The six-year-old final did not exactly help.

There were 42 combinations entering the Ratina Z Arena on Sunday, over a 1.35m course technical enough to ask questions without turning the young horse exam into a survival contest. Yet twenty of them found all the answers and secured their ticket to the jump-off. Twenty. In other words, being good was no longer enough. You had to be good fast.

Niamh McEvoy and Easy Peasy Indebus Z were faster than the rest.

Tenth to go in the jump-off, the Irish rider and the six-year-old gelding stopped the clock at 40.85 seconds. Behind them, nobody would do better. Angelique Böckmann and Django Z (Dourkhan Hero Z x Captain Fire) finished in 41.71. France’s Emeric George completed the podium with Kelstar Derick (Mylord Carthago x Jarnac), in 41.78.

A world title, then.

And a story that goes far beyond the stopwatch.

McEvoy, two weeks to find the buttons

Easy Peasy Indebus Z Easy Peasy Indebus Z did not arrive under Niamh McEvoy’s saddle with a leather-bound instruction manual.

Greg Broderick bought the horse last year, when he was five. McEvoy, for her part, only found out two weeks before Lanaken that she would ride him at the championship. Not exactly the ideal timeframe to learn every comma of a young horse by heart before contesting a World Championship jump-off.

It did not show much.

It has to be said that, while McEvoy was still discovering Easy Peasy’s buttons, she already knows those of Lanaken rather well. World champion in the five-year-olds with Orange de Baugy in 2024, vice-world champion in the six-year-olds with BP Othello last year, the Irish rider this time put her hands back on gold with Easy Peasy Indebus Z. Two world titles and a silver medal in three editions: in Lanaken, McEvoy is starting to know the way to the podium rather well.

“It is really incredible,” she said after her victory. She described a horse with “a lot of power”, particularly careful, but one whose reaction she still did not know when it came time to play against the clock. Easy Peasy gave his answer in the arena: fast, clear and with a serious desire to do the job properly.

His breeder, however, had already spotted something.

Not necessarily a future world champion. Crystal balls remain fairly unreliable equipment in breeding. But something between the horse and his rider.

A connection.

« From the first time I saw the match between them, I saw something really special .” says Dennis Van Tiburg.

And on Sunday, that “something” took the form of a gold medal.

“It Gives You Goosebumps”

To understand what this victory represents, you have to leave the jump-off behind for a few moments.

Forget the tenths of a second.

And go back to the breeding.

Easy Peasy Indebus Z is a son ofEmerald van ’t Ruytershof, with Baloubet du Rouet on the dam’s side. He was bred by Dennis Van Tiburg and his wife Jasmien Thiry six years ago. Good, you are following. On paper, the pedigree obviously has enough to fill a few catalogues. But a pedigree has never jumped by itself.

When Dennis Van Tiburg is asked what it means to see the horse he bred become world champion, the answer does not come through statistics.

It comes through the skin.

« It gives you goosebumps. »

Then he explains.

Seeing a horse from his breeding arrive in the hands of professionals capable of producing him, understanding him and bringing him this far is, according to him, “ a breeder’s dream ».

Because Van Tilburg insists on one point: the right horse also has to arrive in the right place.

And Easy Peasy seems to have found his.

« It is a dream come true ”, he sums up.

Simple. Effective. No need for a fifteen-page press release.

A Family that jumps, but needs time

The title did not exactly fall from the sky, though.

Dennis Van Tiburg knows this family well. It produces horses with plenty of quality and genuine scope over fences, but not necessarily horses to put in just anybody’s hands.

"Sharp" horses ", he explains. Blood, sensitivity, quality. And therefore an instruction manual.

He notably mentions Erdento van de Leeuwerk, from this family, who competed up to 1.60m level in the United States with Alex Matz.

« This family really produces jumping horses, but you have to give them time ”, Van Tiburg explains.

That is perhaps the whole irony of young horse championships: you have to win today without forgetting that the horse is being built for tomorrow.

And at six, Easy Peasy is still very much a horse in training.

Van Tiburg says it himself: he is still green.

That is precisely where he measures McEvoy’s work.

The former VDL rider watches the rider as much as the horse. He knows the feelings, the hesitations and the small moments when, on a young horse, everything can suddenly drift slightly left when the plan had very clearly said right.

In his eyes, McEvoy felt her horse perfectly.

« She is incredible. She feels exactly what has to be done. He is still green, but she rode him brilliantly. »

In Lanaken, then, there was not only a horse with talent. There was the right horse, the right rider and the right Sunday.

Sometimes, that is enough to make magic.

Three or four broodmares, not a factory

The story is all the tastier because behind Easy Peasy Indebus Z there is no giant machine producing dozens of foals.

Dennis Van Tilburg and Jasmien Thiry have, on the contrary, chosen to reduce their breeding operation.

Today, they work with three or four mares, in order to keep a structure they can still manage themselves. Jasmien is a veterinarian and notably looks after reproduction. The couple thinks through the crosses, discusses them, hesitates, starts again.

In short, they breed.

With all the romance that verb contains when you watch foals galloping at sunset, and all the much less romantic reality when reproduction decides that, this year, nothing will go as planned.

Because Van Tiburg does not dress up reality.

There are the successes. And then there is everything else.

The complicated seasons. The pregnancies that do not go as hoped. The decisions impossible to control. The years when you do everything right and nature still reminds you that it never signed a contract.

This season too, he says, has not been simple.

So inevitably, when a horse born from that work wins Lanaken, the medal carries a different weight.

For Dennis, this title is also “ a crown on the work ” done by Jasmien with the mares, the foals and the young horses.

The pieces of the puzzle, at last, fit together.

“It has nothing to do with money”

In the horse business, the sentence could almost sound provocative.

Dennis Van Tiburg says it anyway, with a laugh.

« “It has nothing to do with money.” »

Because on that Sunday, the value of Easy Peasy Indebus Z is not the point.

The point is that precise moment when a breeder watches a horse he had imagined before he was even born enter a major arena, be understood by a rider he respects and become world champion.

That, he says, is why breeders accept “ the highs and the lows ».

And every breeder knows the lows.

« Every breeder knows that things can go wrong. »

But a Sunday like this one has a rather practical virtue: it momentarily wipes out the rest.

Emeric George had chosen not to skip steps

Behind the McEvoy–Easy Peasy duo, the podium also tells a story about these young horses that have to be respected.

Third with Kelstar Derick, Emeric George was contesting his first six-year-old final in Lanaken. The French rider found the course demanding but fair: serious enough to cause faults, without putting the young horses into unnecessary difficulty.

In the jump-off, above all, he had decided not to turn his six-year-old into a Formula 1 car for the sake of a medal.

Two weeks earlier, at the French Championship, a slightly too ambitious attempt in a jump-off had cost him a fault. In Lanaken, with twenty combinations qualified and a few famously quick pilots on the list, George chose another strategy: “ 80 % ” of his maximum speed, prioritising control, short turns and a horse who continued to jump well.

Result: 41.78 seconds and bronze.

« I did not necessarily expect to be on the podium because I did not take all the risks, but I did the maximum I could do with my horse today. »

Among the six-year-olds, sometimes knowing what not to ask matters just as much as knowing what you can ask.

Böckmann, silver at home

Between McEvoy’s gold and George’s bronze, Angelique Böckmann had certainly not come just to make up the numbers.

The German rider, based at Christian Ahlmann’s stables, took silver with Django Z, a stallion by Dourkhan Hero Z and Captain Fire, bred by Germany’s Georg Sievert. A podium that inevitably carries a little extra flavour in Lanaken: Django Z carries the Zangersheide colours and is therefore almost playing at home in the Ratina Z Arena. image

In the jump-off, Böckmann produced another clear and crossed the timing beams in 41.71 seconds. Fast, clean, but not quite enough to catch the 40.85 of Easy Peasy Indebus Z and McEvoy. In the end, eight tenths separated gold from silver.

No world title for Django Z, then, but a medal that confirms his consistency at the end of a week where, like all finalists, he first had to get through the two qualifiers before fighting it out in a particularly dense final.

And for Zangersheide, it is hard to dream of a cleaner symbol: seeing a horse carrying its suffix step onto the second level of the podium at its own World Championship.

Dennis’s feeling

Dennis Van Tilburg says he was not particularly stressed during the week.

Well, not after the first round.

Once he had seen Easy Peasy under McEvoy’s saddle, something reassured him. He knew the horse’s sensitivity. He saw the quality of the rider. And above all, he saw that famous connection between the two.

With a young horse, he reminds us, anything can happen. A fault does not condemn anything. A bad day remains a bad day. Tomorrow will be another one.

But two days before the final, he still said to Jasmien:

« We have to go. »

Why?

No biomechanical analysis.

No algorithm.

« A feeling. »

The feeling that something could happen.

On Sunday, Easy Peasy Indebus Z entered the Ratina Z Arena. Niamh McEvoy let her talent speak. The clock stopped at 40.85 seconds.

And nobody went faster.

Dennis Van Tilburg was right: something was going to happen.

It is called a world champion title.

Among breeders, apparently, they rather call it goosebumps.

Find the full results of the six-year-old final here

Find the article on the seven-year-old final of the Lanaken World Championship here