CO DOWN’s Conor Swail was the winner of the five-star $35,000 1.50m ATCO Founders Classic at the world famous Spruce Meadows Masters in Calgary, Canada last weekend.

Riding Vanessa Mannix’s nine-year-old gelding GK Coco Chanel (Clarimo x Lerano 2), he lodged the winning time of 38.31 by the tiniest of margins, from Canada’s Eric Lamaze and Chacco Kid (38.82), when second last to go. Swail had earlier taken a heavy fall at the last fence with his first horse, Flower.

Speaking about the fall to the press afterwards, Swail said: She’s (Flower) very fast horse and actually she’s come in here with a lot of form. She was in Vancouver and won every ranking class. So we were coming in with a lot of confidence and the round went well. She was amazing... and then I moved forward and I ran for a few steps and it was gone.

“At that stage, she was full off the bridle and I changed my mind a little late. She was fully committed at that stage and she tried to jump it.

“I haven’t taken such a heavy fall in a while and I was focused on doing a better job with the other horse.”

In total 62 went to post and off these 13 maintained clean sheets to progress to the jump-off phase. Cian O’Connor and Callisto had taken a early lead and eventually had to settle for third place with a time of 39.85 seconds, while the Grand Slam winner Philipp Weishaupt and Call me Eva took fourth when clear in 40.42.

Spruce Meadows has proved a happy hunting ground for Swail and GK Coco Chanel as they also landed a win in the five-star West Jet Cup earlier this summer.