Great Britain's Michael Whitaker stormed to victory at the fourth leg of the 2009/2010 Rolex FEI World Cup™ Jumping series in Verona, Italy over the weekend, where the world's top riders were faced with the toughest track of the season so far. The result comes hot on the heels of his winning return to competition in New York the previous weekend — following after a four-month ban for doping of the stallion Tackeray.

Second to go in the five-horse jump-off in Verona, Michael stamped his authority on the result with a fantastic run from Insul Tech Amai. Germany's Gilbert Bockmann slotted into runner-up spot with another talented nine year old, No Father's Girl, and reigning European Champion, Kevin Staut from France, finished third with Silvana.

Whitaker was in flying form throughout the Italian fixture. He was second on Thursday with Portofino who belied her 15 years with a spring-heeled performance and second again yesterday evening with Amai. Left with the decision about which of the two to take in today's tough class he said he decided on Amai "because Portofino has shorter legs than Amai, so he can go faster!"

"I won a couple of World Cup qualifiers in North America but I've never won a Rolex before so I'm very happy," Whitaker said, brandishing his new time-piece afterwards. "The course today was very difficult, a lot of tricky lines and big fences, in particular the combination at the end was asking a lot but it went well for us anyway." he said.

Talking about Amai, Whitaker said the nine year old Belgian-bred has been with him for three years now. "I jumped him in the World Cup here last year and we had just one down, but yesterday he was second and today he gave me a great feeling - he is a really fast horse." Whitaker's next port of call is Toronto, Canada next week and he hopes to return to the Rolex FEI World Cup Jumping Western European circuit at Stuttgart, Germany where the next leg of the 2009/2010 season takes place in two weeks' time.