As Jeanne Sadran and her horse, Dexter de Kerglenn, galloped and soared over a series of five-foot-tall obstacles during the 2025 Saut Hermès show-jumping final at the Grand Palais in Paris last weekend, all eyes were on the 23-year-old rider and horse.
Except for mine.
I was more interested in Jeanne’s father, Olivier Sadran, who was standing off to my right. He stressfully watched his daughter clear each hurdle, lunging forward at times, grimacing at others. In his mind, he was channeling whatever positivity he could muster to telepathically will his daughter to victory.
It must have worked, because Sadran won. And guess who sprinted down the tunnel to congratulate her?
Unlike the families of many riders, Sadran’s doesn’t come from the horse world. She got into show jumping as a young girl, and ever since, her father has been her biggest champion. As she clocked a victory lap to the echoing applause of thousands of guests, it was also a win for the dads.
I too am a Horse Dad. We’re a rare breed. My daughter, Bibi, is also an international show jumper. And like Olivier Sadran, I lift my leg like a dog and torque my back in the middle of a tense competition. Surely the extra centimeter I offer up to the universe can make the difference between winning and losing.
I thought about Bibi, who is attending college in Canada, as I spent three days at the Saut Hermès ogling horses, snacking and sneaking champagne, and shouting to her over a quick FaceTime: “They even have a saddle stand!” I felt like the father of a Taylor Swift superfan, attending the Eras Tour without her.
I even took selfies with Bibi’s idols, including Sadran and Simon Delestre. The latter won Sunday’s big event, the Grand Prix Saut Hermès, in dramatic fashion, with a risky final turn that eked out victory by a few hundredths of a second.
It was spectacular and surreal to witness an equestrian event inside the Grand Palais, the Beaux-Arts pavilion built for the 1900 World’s Fair. Stables for more than 130 horses were lined up along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
Before attending, I imagined the Saut to be the Super Bowl of the jumping world, but once inside the Palais, I quickly realized nobody was wearing Patrick Mahomes jerseys or drinking Red Bull. The rarefied crowd was dressed in bespoke tailoring, $1,000 loafers, and silk scarves from a certain somewhere. I regretted wearing my Hokas.
But the Saut is far from being a mere cocktail party. It’s one of the most competitive events of the year, and its riders are among the most accomplished on the circuit. Delestre’s victory came just after his win at the Rolex Grand Prix at the Dutch Masters in ’s-Hertogenbosch. (That’s a city in the Netherlands.) Up next: the Longines Jumping World Cup Final in Basel, Switzerland, on April 2.
“The idea of holding a major show-jumping competition at the Grand Palais is a long-standing one, and it was difficult to implement. The arrival of Hermès as an exclusive partner was decisive,” says Patrick Caron, a one-time world champion and former coach of France’s Olympic jumping team. “It’s now well established, and this is a very good thing for the image of equestrian sports and for France.”
But back to the leather goods. Along the periphery of the action, Hermès’s craftspeople were seated at their stations, and they were happy to lend their savoir faire to saddle-curious spectators.
“If the horse is good, the rider will be,” said François Boissinot, who is a development adviser with Hermès. “He’s the one who gives me information on his form, his pathologies.”
For customized measurements, Hermès uses an instrument called the Equiscan, which is placed on the animal’s back and records no fewer than 100 data points corresponding to the saddle’s contact areas. The information is sent on to the house’s workshop, where each element—panels, flaps, blocks, seat depth—is adapted to the rider’s preferences.
There were no price tags on display, but in this sport, everything is expensive—the horses, the equipment, the entry fees. It all reminded me that there are horse dads, and then there are horse dads. Those guys spring for the customized saddles, while I’m just scrambling to scrape together college tuition.
“Jean-Louis Dumas [the late chairman of Hermès] used to say the first client is the horse,” says Chloé Nobécourt, the managing director of Hermès Equestrian. “And it’s still very true today.”
Hermès’s original enterprise was making harnesses, which expanded into saddlery and tack. The scarves, bracelets, and Birkin bags came later. But the starting point for the company’s stratospheric success is still le cheval. And show jumping, although wrapped in elegance and pageantry and lily-white riding pants, remains a rugged sport. The knocked-down rails, dramatic falls, and disobedient horses at the Saut Hermès were just a few reminders of that.
“There are days where it goes well, and other days it doesn’t go so well,” says Nobécourt. I think Olivier Sadran would agree. Fortunately, for him, this was one of the good days.
As the crowd filed out of the Grand Palais after the awards ceremony on Sunday night, the events team busied themselves collecting the flower pots and obstacles like a team of elves. I texted Bibi one last time, promising her that after graduation, we’d return to the Saut together, dad and daughter.
“Dad, daughter, and horse,” she quickly replied.
“Oh, yeah.” I replied with what I think was a shrug emoji. “Can’t forget the horse.”
John von Sothen is a Paris-based writer, a frequent contributor to AIR MAIL, and the author of Monsieur Mediocre
