Three riders came back for the final round of the ATCO Electric Six Bar, the fence stood at 2.05 metres, and only one of them got over it. Sanne Thijssen and the bay gelding King Blue were the sole combination to clear the last obstacle on Friday night, taking the 2026 ATCO Electric Six Bar outright under the lights of the International Ring in front of a grandstand that had been building towards the moment all evening.
Eight combinations had started the class, which asks riders to jump a line of six fences rising in height, with the whole line raised again after each successful round until only one of them is left standing. Three survived to the final: Spain's Armando Trapote, Ireland's Daniel Coyle and Thijssen, who went last and left nothing in doubt.
Why the Six Bar Fills the Grandstands
Sanne Thijssen (NED) & King Blue winners of the #819 ATCO Electric Six Bar © Spruce Meadows Media/Tony Lewis
The Six Bar is sometimes described as the high jump of horse sport, and the comparison holds in the one respect that matters most to a crowd. It is the only class on the calendar where the obstacle itself is the opponent, with no clock, no jump-off time and no tactical decision about where to cut a corner. The fence goes up, you jump it or you do not, and every person in the stands can see precisely what is happening without needing to be told.
That transparency is why Friday night at the Masters has been drawing record crowds for decades, a Friday attendance of 59,765 having been logged as long ago as 2011, and why the Six Bar remains the reason most of them are still in their seats after dark. Spruce Meadows had spent much of the summer promoting this year's edition on the back of what happened in 2025, when the Czech Republic's Vaclav Stanek with Quintin and Great Britain's Joseph Stockdale with It's Confidential both cleared a final fence set at 2.13 metres, shared the victory and broke a venue record that had stood for twenty-one years.
What 2026 produced was the other version of the same drama. Rather than a record, it gave the crowd a field whittled down to three, a fence nobody else could jump, and a single rider left to take the applause. Both make for extraordinary television, though only one of them comes with a number attached, and Thijssen will not mind in the slightest which category hers falls into.
Thieme Sets the Tone in the Tourmaline Oil Cup
The evening had opened with the Tourmaline Oil Cup 1.60m, which brought 32 horse and rider combinations into the International Ring and proved considerably harder than that entry suggests, with just five going clear to reach the jump-off.
André Thieme and DSP Chakaria produced the fastest of them, stopping the clock in 43.35 seconds to take the title ahead of Sweden's Thomas Ryan and Jezebeau BC. It was a win worth reading in context, because Thieme and the same mare had delivered the decisive round that helped Germany take the Longines League of Nations leg at Ocala back in March, and because he would be back in the same ring the following afternoon as part of the German squad that went on to win a record twelfth BMO Nations' Cup went on to win a record twelfth BMO Nations' Cup. The Paramount Resources Cup 1.45m also ran on the Friday programme, with Carly Stevens and Springsteen finishing seventh.
Three Days Already Behind Them
By the time the Six Bar fences went up, the Masters had been running since Wednesday, when Richard Vogel and Daniel Coyle took the opening honours, Coyle and Calippo 57 winning the Cardel Homes Cup and Conor Swail and Casturano taking the ATCO Cup. Thursday belonged to Lillie Keenan and Kick On in the CANA Cup 1.55m, contested after a wet morning that eventually cleared into a serviceable afternoon.
Before any of that, on Monday 7 September, the venue had run its Preview day at the original price of admission, five Canadian dollars for one day only, giving visitors an early look at the entertainment, shopping and family programming that runs right through the tournament week. The horses themselves had arrived the previous weekend aboard two Spruce Meadows chartered 747s, landing at Calgary International in what has become one of the more remarkable logistical set-pieces in the sport.
Moments during the CSIO Spruce Meadows 'Masters’, 2026. Image: © M. Froment for EQuerry Co
Not Only the Jumping
The TELUS Evening of the Horse is a variety programme as much as a competition, and the 2026 edition carried two moments worth recording alongside the sport. The winners of Name the Foal, presented by TELUS, revealed their chosen names during the evening having been selected from thousands of submissions sent in from across Canada, and met TELUS executive vice president Navin Arora in the ring.
Germany's Celle Stallions, meanwhile, made their first Spruce Meadows appearance since 2015, performing alongside His Majesty's Band of the Welsh Guards, who had travelled from London for the week. A Canadian showground on the edge of the Rocky Mountain foothills booking a Household Division band and a German state stud to fill the gaps between classes tells you something about the scale of the ambition, and about a venue that generates CAD $239 million in direct spending a year.
