Riding Thomas Straumann’s bay gelding Abbervail van het Dingeshof, the Tipperary show jumper settled for the runner-up purse of 12,300 euro, while Netherlands winner Maikel van der Vleuten pocketed 20,300 euro for his unbeatable time of 52.96 seconds with the grey mare VDL Groep Eureka.

Ireland was not without victories at the Grand Palais arena though, as Galway’s Michael Duffy won the Under 25 Les Talents Hermès jump-off with Cortina 200, recording the fastest of four double clear rounds to be achieved in the competition.

The Tipperary rider, piloting Thomas Straumann’s bay stallion All Star 5, joined a six-strong jump-off in Qatar after the starting field of 38 was severely whittled down by the first two demanding rounds. However, Lynch could not match the final scorching round of Netherlands rider Gerco Schroder with the Nabab de Reve stallion London, who stopped the clock with a more than comfortable three seconds in hand to pocket the 214,000 euro winner’s prize.

In the weekend’s other five-star Grand Prix at Wellington in Florida, a strong Irish contingent struggled to leave all fences standing on fellow-countryman Alan Wade’s opening round course late on Saturday night, with only Co. Down’s Conor Swail managing zero faults aboard the stallion Lansdowne. Swail dropped two fences in the jump-off, however, to finish 10th with a 10,000 dollar share of the half-million-dollar prize fund.

Victory at Wellington and a 165,000 dollar share of the fund went to Brazil’s Alvaro de Miranda and the 13 year-old Westphalian gelding Ad Rahmannshof’s Bogeno, who triumphed in the closely fought ten horse jump-off.