Peter Charles turned BBC's Grandstand into a personal benefit on Saturday afternoon as the TV sports show took a look back at his brilliant victory in Friday night's Puissance at Olympia and then showed the Irish rider trouncing the opposition to scoop Saturday afternoon's feature, the Ericsson World Cup qualifier.

The World Cup class was the scalp double European gold medallist Charles had earmarked, not just this week, but right through his career. In fact only one World Cup class had ever fallen to Charles and that was back in 1985 when he won for Britain with April Sun.

Having defected from the British team at the end of 1991 to don the green jacket for Ireland at the Barcelona Olympics, the door to the World Cup winner's enclosure seemed to be firmly shut in Charles' face.

He notched up a string of seven seconds, including two at Olympia in 1992 and again in 1997, but there was no denying him on Saturday as he swept aside the opposition in the jump-off.

Charles had got into winning mode in Friday night's Puissance when he and Sagrat, a horse he had never sat on in competition before, soared over 7ft 3ins to claim the £4,500 first prize.

Not surprisingly, in the ante-post betting for the World Cup class, the bookies had Charles as 3 to 1 joint-favourite with Germany's Markus Ehning, winner of Friday afternoon's pre-qualifier.

But it was Charles who justified favouritism when, second last of the eight through to the timed round, he stopped the clock on 42.35 seconds with the 11-year-old Carnavelley.

Ehning was last in to try and wrest the £11,000 prize pot away from Charles but an angled approach at the planks saw the stallion For Pleasure trail a leg and, even though his time was 2.5 seconds to the good, four faults dropped him to fifth and a £2,000 reward.

Jos Lansink, the Dutch-born rider who now rides for Belgium, slotted into second with AK Caridor ahead of French combination Michel Robert and the aptly-named Olympia, the only others to go clear in the barrage.

"I've been trying to win this for a long time," Charles said afterwards.

"There's a lot of prestige attached to winning here and I've always considered it the best World Cup class."

Unfortunately for the hosts, fourth was the highest they could climb up the order when Michael Whitaker's pathfinding round fell apart at the planks that were later to catch out Ehning.