Brussels Stephex Masters: Piergiorgio Bucci’s remarkable second act

Piergiorgio Bucci remembers vividly his first visit to the Piazza di Siena in Rome. His uncle had taken him to watch the Nations Cup. Bucci, then a young boy from outside Milan, watched the riders and horses as if he were witnessing something from another world.

“I still remember every jump I saw, every rider I saw,” he said.

Decades later, he was the rider winning in the arena.

Bucci rode Palietter vd N.Ranch to victory in May in the feature class at the Rolex Grand Prix at the CSIO Piazza di Siena in Rome, the same show he had first visited as a boy, long before he had horses, the experience or even the proper equipment to imagine himself competing there.

Even now, months after the victory, Bucci sometimes wakes up and asks himself whether it really happened.

“Did I really win the Grand Prix in Rome? Was that a dream or did it actually happen?” he said. “And I have to think to myself, yes, that happened. It was just incredible.”

That victory was the crowning moment of an extraordinary 2026 season. Bucci, at 51, is in peak form and competing at a level at which youth, reflexes and fearlessness are often treated as prerequisites. His season began with a Global Champions Tour grand prix victory in Mexico, followed by another strong performance on the same tour in Miami, and continued with Rome, where Palietter gave him the sort of win that a rider can easily spend an entire career pursuing.

Bucci said he wasn’t surprised to now be winning so frequently at this level because he finally has horses capable of matching what he has always believed he could do.

“I know I have super horses,” he said. “And I know that I can do it.”

Bucci once again impressed at the World Championships last week and he so nearly won a medal. Hantano had jumped clear over four rounds, but agonisingly that run of clears came to an end at the very last fence in the fifth and final round of jumping. It cost him a silver medal, and they finished fourth.

Next stop this week is the Brussels Stephex Masters, where Bucci will ride Hantano in the Rolex Grand Prix.

Bucci has spent much of the year thinking not merely about producing results but about timing them — when to jump, when to rest, and when to leave a horse alone. The key to success is to arrive at a competition with a horse that is fresh and confident. Bucci knows exactly how much responsibility rests with the rider, too.

“I need to ride really good,” he said. “If I do that, my horses can be really competitive.”

With Hantano, he followed a deliberate programme designed around the World Championships. He increased the horse’s workload earlier in the year, jumped at La Baule — where they won — and Rotterdam, and then gave him time to recover.

“I spent a lot of hours, to try to understand what could be the best approach to the World Championships,” Bucci said. “Its absolutely the goal of the year.”

Bucci won the feature class at the Rolex Grand Prix at the CSIO Piazza di Siena in Rome. (Rolex Series)

Bucci’s career did not begin with an obvious route into elite show jumping. His family did not ride. There was no established jumping tradition in his hometown. Bucci simply loved horses.

“I was born with it,” he said. “Like a kid that loves cats or dogs.”

As a child, he played with plastic horses. He watched Western movies, not necessarily because he cared about cowboys or the films themselves, but because they contained what he wanted to see: horses and people riding them. Then, when Bucci was 12 years old, a trekking centre opened near his hometown.

Bucci went there and quickly discovered that enthusiasm could be exchanged for access. The owner noticed his passion for horses and asked him to help around the stable. He mucked out, he cleaned, he helped with whatever needed doing and, in return, he was given opportunities to ride.

“I took clients out on long rides and loved it,” Bucci said.

The horses available to him were not made for jumping, but Bucci and his friends at the trekking centre started to teach them how to jump.

“We had no idea what we were doing and we were jumping in Western saddles, which isn’t normal,” said Bucci. “We taught ourselves.”

They then bought English saddles, experimented and kept jumping, but there wasn’t any immediate success.

Bucci spent two years at the very first level of competition.

“It was very bad,” he said. “But I was really stubborn.”

Stubbornness would become one of the defining characteristics of his career. He kept going and eventually he reached the highest levels of the sport in Italy, winning Nations Cup competitions and major grand prix classes. In 2009, he and the Italian team won a silver medal at the European Championships, yet success brought its own frustration and Bucci felt stuck.

“I wanted to become one of the best show jumpers in the world,” he said. “And I had to think about what should I do to become one of them.”

His answer was to leave Italy. He moved to the Netherlands, where he would spend the next 16 years. Bucci wanted to immerse himself in the centre of the international show jumping world. He reasoned that if he wanted to compete with the best, he needed to live among them.

“I could see a handful of the top 10 show jumpers in the world a few days a week at competitions and in training,” Bucci said. “I think you can learn so much from watching the best in the world every week. I watched warm-ups, how horses were handled and trained. Plus, I met breeders, dealers and riders who would become friends.”

The Netherlands gave Bucci the proximity to excellence he had been seeking but, over time, another feeling developed: he missed home.

He missed the weather, the food, the restaurants, the people and the habits accumulated over a lifetime. Bucci had left Italy in his mid-30s, old enough to understand that a country can become part of a person in ways that are difficult to replace.

“I think it’s a culture, the habits,” he said. “When you live in a country for so many years, it’s very difficult to lose those habits.”

The decision to return was partly practical, too. Bucci believed that an Italian sponsor or investor might be more inclined to support an Italian rider competing under the same flag.

He returned in 2026 to just outside Milan, believing that he had taken what he needed from his Dutch experience.

Bucci is reluctant to attribute his results this year entirely to the move home. He calls the timing a coincidence, but he acknowledges that his mood is different.

“I feel every day more fulfilled,” he said.

And what about his two extraordinary horses, Palietter vd N.Ranch and Hantano?

“I knew when I saw a video of him and smiled, knowing that he was my type of horse, and when I first rode him, the feeling was straight away amazing,” he said.

He felt that he was sitting on an athlete — a horse with the talent to compete at the very highest level.

Palietter and Hantano, however, are profoundly different. Both are exceptionally careful and powerful, but Hantano has a more complicated jumping technique. He can twist his body and jump in an unusual way, making Bucci’s accuracy as a rider critical.

“If I ride Hantano perfect, he jumps only clear rounds,” Bucci said. “But there is little room for error.”

Palietter is more athletic and, Bucci believes, more forgiving when the rider takes a risk. That does not mean the horse is infallible, nor does Bucci consider himself to be.

In London recently, while competing in the Global Champions Tour grand prix, he had the first fence down after failing to be sufficiently accurate.

“My horse deserved to jump clear,” he said. “It was my mistake.”

That willingness to accept responsibility is central to Bucci’s philosophy. He does not believe he needs to prove himself to other riders, critics or spectators and he only wants to do the right thing by his horses.

“I never thought I need to prove anything to anyone — only myself,” he said.

There is still plenty he wants to prove though.

He will take Palietter to the Brussels Masters. Brussels offers a different atmosphere from Rome and La Baule, two of the sport’s historic destinations. Bucci admires the modern show’s scale, organization and ambition, describing it as a festival of show jumping, with world-class facilities, footing, hospitality and stabling.

Bucci does not feel fundamentally different from the rider he was at 30. In some respects, he believes he is in a better place. He takes greater care of his body now and no longer smokes. The greatest advantage, he says, is experience.

“I am more smart,” he said. “Before, I was just not thinking enough. Now I think more.”

But once the decision is made, the old Bucci remains.

“When it comes having to fight in the arena to win, I really enjoy that,” he said.

That is perhaps the simplest explanation for why, after so many years and so many miles, he is still here.