Nations Cup Intesa Sanpaolo, Piazza di Siena 2026

30 May 2026 Denisa Kucik

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Mexico, 78 Years, and a Jump-Off That Rewrote the Piazza di Siena Record Books

There is a particular kind of silence that falls over a show jumping arena in the seconds before a rider enters the ring in a jump-off, when everything that has happened in the previous three hours comes down to one horse and one person. On Friday afternoon at Piazza di Siena, that silence belonged to Patricio Pasquel. What followed belonged to history.
Pasquel rode a clear round to hand Mexico the Nations Cup Intesa Sanpaolo — the first time the Mexican team had won at this venue since 1948. Seventy-eight years. Two generations of riders who came close or didn’t come at all. And now, on a warm Roman afternoon in the centenary year of the CSIO di Roma, their names are back on the roll of honour alongside the giants of the sport.

The weight of 78 years

Context, first. The Nations Cup at Piazza di Siena is one of the oldest and most prestigious fixtures in European equestrian sport, held annually in a setting — the oval arena inside Villa Borghese, flanked by umbrella pines, minutes from the centre of Rome — that has no real equivalent anywhere in the world. Nations have been building legacies here for nearly a century. Italy leads the all-time standings with 29 victories. France has 20. The list of past winners reads like a map of equestrian power across the decades.
Mexico’s only previous entry on that list dated to 1948. Show jumping was a different sport then — different equipment, different horses, different training methods, a different world. The fact that Friday’s victory came in the centenary edition of the CSIO, in a year when the entire week at Villa Borghese has carried a heightened sense of occasion, is the kind of symmetry that sporting history occasionally produces and that no press office could have scripted.

How the jump-off unfolded

The four-nation jump-off came down to Mexico and Germany after the main competition, with Carlos Hank Guerreiro, Patricio Pasquel, Andres Azcarraga and Fernando Martinez Sommer delivering a collective performance that proved just good enough to force the decider.
In the jump-off, it was Pasquel who settled it. He produced a clear round on Chakkaloup PS ahead of Germany’s Richard Vogel, and that was enough. Germany took second, having pushed Mexico all the way. Great Britain claimed third place.
The full Mexican lineup: Carlos Hank Guerreiro on H5 Shaq Attack, Patricio Pasquel on Chakkaloup PS, Andres Azcarraga on Contendros 2, and Fernando Martinez Sommer on Joep.

Italy on home ground: fourth place and a coach who sees the bigger picture

Fourth place for the host nation is the result that tends to generate the most complicated feelings in a home crowd — close enough to matter, far enough from the podium to sting. But the Italian team’s coach, Stefano Cesaretto, offered a perspective worth sitting with.

The reason we push our riders to compete in events like this is because we know this is the race that makes a rider. Just jumping here, as a team, allows these young riders to take the final step to becoming one. At an individual level, any one of our riders achieves excellent results every year.”

It’s the argument of a coach who is building something rather than managing it — who measures success not only in podium finishes but in what the experience of competing at Piazza di Siena does to a rider over time. Whether the crowd sees it that way is another matter.
Emanuele Camilli, competing on home soil in Rome where he grew up, was candid about his own afternoon: pleased with how his horse performed, less so with his own second round. “This is our sport,” he said, “and sometimes it goes like that. I hope to do better next time — Sunday, obviously.”
Sunday. The individual competition. The week at Villa Borghese is not over yet.

What this Nations Cup means in the context of the centenary

This edition of the CSIO di Roma carries the full weight of a hundredth anniversary. The Frecce Tricolori flew over the arena before the first rider entered. Opera was performed on these grounds two days ago. An Arena Polo European Championship — the first in history — has been running simultaneously at the Galoppatoio. The week has been constructed to feel like a celebration of something, not just a competition.
Into that context, Mexico’s 78-year wait ending on Friday afternoon fits with a strange and satisfying neatness. The record books get a new entry. An old story gets its conclusion. And Piazza di Siena, which has been producing these moments for a century, adds another one to the archive.

Denisa Kucik