The Rolex Grand Prix gets underway on Sunday at CHIO Aachen and already it has been billed as one of the greatest ever renewals of this class.Like Wimbledon in tennis or the Masters in golf, this competition, hosted at the legendary Soers showground in northern Germany, is the one every elite-level rider is desperate to compete in.And the performances in Friday and Saturday’s qualifiers suggested we may be in for something special in Sunday’s Rolex Grand Prix, which is one of the most prestigious classes in the sport, featuring enormous 1.6m (5ft 3in) fences over an incredibly technical course.Competition is fiercely hot this year, with 28 of the world’s top 30 ranked riders lining up to try to take home the €500,000 (£432,000; $580,000) first prize and be added to the illustrious roll of honour of previous winners.Seven of the top 10 Elo-rated horses by statistics company EquiRatings are set to compete in Aachen. The highest rated of those is Point Break, the ride of Great Britain’s Ben Maher, who has a 57% career clear round rate, closely followed by Greya, the mount of the USA’s Kent Farrington.The EquiRatings Elo rating is a data-driven rating system that tracks the history of a horse’s results over its entire career to-date. It measures a horse’s long-term consistency, how competitively a horse is performing and the quality of opponents it is beating.Played out in a vast, iconic grass stadium that can seat up to 40,000 fans, this is a competition that often ranks above even Olympic gold in a show jumper’s list of lofty dreams.“The atmosphere in the main stadium is incomparable – that adrenaline-filled, goosebump feeling exists nowhere else in the world,” says 29-year-old German rider Richard Vogel. He is ranked third in the world and best known for his blisteringly fast performances with the stallion United Touch – and also, infamously, for finding a shortcut in Aachen’s vast main stadium a couple of years ago by jumping a line of photographers.On Saturday afternoon, there was an outstanding performance from the United States’ Lillie Keenan and her notoriously swift little horse Kick On — who is known as Ken at home.Competing in a class of 48 that ran over a course of 1.55m fences, the 29-year-old Harvard graduate earned €75,000 after she followed up a beautiful clear in the first round by winning a 13-strong jump-off.“I’ve had him (Ken) for two years, and the beginning of our relationship was a little rough as he had a habit of bolting,” said Keenan. “But I had some help with that, although there were doubts about whether the problem was fixable.“I think Ken was testing me, and because I never gave up on him and I always believed, we got through the rough patches and he’s grown into one of my top horses and I’m lucky to have him.”Keenan and Ken, a 12-year-old stallion owned by Chansonette Farm LLC, were the penultimate combination to enter the arena for the jump-off, and she had her foot on the gas and meant business from the get-go. She rode the tightest lines as fast as she could, ensuring Ken took fewer strides between fences to clock a rapid time of 38.21 seconds, almost 1.5 seconds quicker than their nearest rivals.“He’s an incredible little horse and he has so much heart — he did it so easily,” said an emotional Keenan after securing victory.Keenan also credited her trainer McLain Ward, who is a five-time Olympic medallist in show jumping for the United States, for aiding her in pursuing her show jumping goals.“McLain has been my mentor for seven years, and he truly changed my life because when I first went to him for help. I wasn’t believing in my ability to compete at the top level, and he’s changed so much for me in the best way possible,” she explained. “The most crucial piece of advice he gave me before I went in (for the jump-off) was to ride like the best version of me, and it worked. I had nothing to lose, and as long as I didn’t get in Ken’s way, I knew he’d do it for me.”On Friday, Ireland’s Daniel Coyle had led the way in a class of 49 that featured 1.55m fences, finishing the course fastest (70.99 seconds) to take home the €37,500 first prize. Riding Farrel — a 16-year-old, owned by Ariel Grange — Coyle was 0.48 seconds quicker than second-placed Luciana Diniz from Brazil, who was riding Vertigo du Desert.The 31-year-old Coyle, who is ranked 17th in the world, said: “Farrel has been an incredible horse for me. He had an injury a few years ago and I thought the world was ending. He had some surgeries, with the hope that he could just have a normal life, not competing. But then the vets gave him the go-ahead to compete again as he made such a great recovery, and I’m incredibly proud of him.“I’m a bit emotional that he’s come back to the top of the sport and is performing the way he is.”Forty riders have qualified from the two feeder classes on Friday and Saturday, and the rider with the most points from qualifying is the last one to jump in the first round on Sunday (12.40pm local time, 6.40am ET), giving them the advantage of watching the earlier attempts to get an idea of how the course is riding.Usually held over 10 days mid-summer, attracting competitors in equestrian sport’s varied disciplines of show jumping, dressage, eventing, driving and vaulting, this year’s CHIO Aachen looks a little different. The 2026 event is playing host only to show jumping over three days, with the venue saving itself to stage the World Championships across all those disciplines in August.The Aachen Rolex Grand Prix forms one quarter of the Rolex Grand Slam of Show Jumping, with the other three legs taking part in CHI de Genève in Geneva, Switzerland, The Dutch Masters in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, and the CSIO Spruce Meadows Masters in Canada.Any rider who wins two of these shows in a row wins an additional €500,000 on top of the prize money they earned at each competition. If a rider wins three of these shows in a row, they receive another €1m. If that same individual then continues their success by winning a fourth major in succession, they are rewarded with a further €1m bonus. Only one rider has ever clinched the Rolex Grand Slam of Show Jumping: the UK’s Scott Brash in 2015.Many riders are also using this competition as an opportunity to get their best horses in the main arena at Aachen before August’s World Championships, in the hopes of trying to find an iota of advantage on this unique grass stage – a sea-change from the manicured sand arenas that make up so many of equestrian sport’s playgrounds.How to watchCHIO Aachen is on WDR, ARD or ZDF television channels in Germany. Worldwide, it is streaming (subscription only) on ClipMyHorse.TV. The CHIO Aachen app also tracks live results.ScheduleSunday, May 24