The longlist is out for the watch world’s premier awards – and we have a few thoughts…
By Chris Hall

1There are too many watches
By my count, there are 195 watches on the longlist for this year’s Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Geneve. That is a lot; an average of 16 for each of the 12 categories. If the awards run along the same lines as usual, we will be saying goodbye to around 120 of them when the jury – assembled from the finest minds in watchmaking – whittles this down in a couple of months’ time. This would be a meaningful exercise if it was remotely difficult to see which watches would be struck from the list, but it’s not. A quick test: if the brand exhibits at SIHH or has a retail presence in London (insert your nearest watch-heavy metropolis here), it’ll make it through. If not, it’ll be seriously lucky.  Sorry Greco Geneve, but it’s not going to happen.
The reason this gets my goat is the likes of Horage, Greco Geneve, Rlongtou, Strom and many more have a butterfly in a hurricane’s chance of even making it to the shortlist. Is the CHF500 entry fee really worth it" I suppose it got me to mention them, so that’s something. And hey, a few years ago they gave the sports watch prize to an Eberhard, so what do I know" But really, there are too many watches on this list.
2 Category confusion
Every year the GPHG tweaks the format, and that’s fair enough. It’s their...