Long Live the Queen

Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro on their way to their second consecutive Reem Acra FEI World Cup Dressage Final title. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

Her new logo – just released within the past couple of weeks – incorporates an image of a crown, so it’s only fitting that Charlotte Dujardin, the Queen of Everything, retains her title.

With the almost too-good-to-be-real Valegro, the British woman is now the back-to-back Reem Acra FEI World Cup Dressage Final champion as well as the reigning Olympic, European, and World Equestrian Games champion. With the same How to Train Your Dragon freestyle that won gold in Normandy last August, Dujardin squashed the competition with a score of 94.196 percent in today’s Grand Prix Freestyle, coming just tenths of a point short of the world-record score of 94.300 percent she and “Blueberry” set at Olympia in London last December. The nearly foot-perfect freestyle brought the crowd of nearly 11,000 in the Thomas & Mack Center to its feet for a thunderous ovation.

“Valegro just loves it,” Dujardin said afterward when asked how she keeps the 13-year-old Dutch gelding (Negro x Gerschwin) going. “It’s not like I have to force him, because he loves the work.”

Dujardin frequently comments on how lucky she is to have the ride on this reliable horse. “I just sit and steer him ’round. There’s no sweat involved,” she quipped.

 

Edward Gal and Glock's Undercover N.O.P. of the Netherlands passage to second place in the World Cup Dressage Final freestyle. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

Nearly 10 percentage points behind the untouchable Dujardin was second-placed Edward Gal of the Netherlands, who piloted the 14-year-old Dutch gelding Glock’s Undercover N.O.P. (Ferro x Donnerhall) to a score of 84.696 percent. Undercover was more relaxed than he’d been in Thursday’s Grand Prix, with a longer neck and a nose in front of the vertical. He could have stretched out more in the extended trots, and the walk rhythm varied a bit at times on account of tension. His pirouettes drew audience applause. It was a solid program to mildly interesting but not compelling orchestral instrumentals; bottom line, it wasn’t Dujardin’s freestyle.

Gal showed a quick wit and good humor when he was asked how it felt to be the oldest rider at the press conference for the top four finishers. “Normally I’m not the oldest one because Isabell [Werth of Germany] is here,” he said with a grin.

 

World Cup Dressage Final newcomers Jessica von Bredow-Werndl and Unee BB of Germany finished third. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

A new face ascended the medal podium in Las Vegas to claim third place: Germany’s Jessica von Bredow-Werndl on the 14-year-old Dutch stallion Unee BB (Gribaldi x Dageraad). Von Bredow-Werndl’s unusual freestyle began with the voice of Martin Luther King Jr. and his iconic “I have a dream” line. Later in the program, we heard the rider’s own voice as she uttered over the music, “I have a dream that all living creatures can respect each other.” Unee BB missed a two-tempi change and swapped leads as von Bredow-Werndl brought him back from an extended canter down the long side, but the freestyle was strong enough to earn a score of 80.464 percent.

For the US, Delight…and Crushing Disappointment

Our new young stars, Laura Graves and Verdades, gave a super performance in Las Vegas. This competition is “Diddy’s” very first indoor show – and it happens to be an incredibly close, loud, and electric venue. After an initial spook at the floodlit World Cup Dressage Final trophy in the corner near H, the 13-year-old Dutch gelding (Florett As x Goya) got a little backed off for a short time. He got afraid during a piaffe at A, and later he scooted forward during a canter half-pass when the crowd applauded. But these were honest rookie-horse reactions, and Diddy’s overall excellent quality and a sensitive and sympathetic ride from Graves resulted in a score of 79.125, which put them in fifth place…except that it didn’t.

 

The USA's Laura Graves and Verdades finished fourth. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

In the official standings, Graves was fourth. The reason didn’t become clear right away, but the first sign of a problem was the buzzing in the audience when the fourth-placed scorers, Steffen Peters and Legolas 92, didn’t appear at the awards ceremony. They weren’t mentioned. Where were they?

Where they were, I’m sorry to report, was eliminated. As World Cup Finals press chief Marty Bauman announced at the press conference afterward, Peters was eliminated because evidence of blood was found on Legolas’s side after his freestyle. The FEI has a zero-tolerance rule regarding blood on horses – you may recall Adelinde Cornelissen and Parzival’s elimination during their Grand Prix test at the 2010 World Equestrian Games when the horse showed blood in his mouth from biting his tongue – and so the FEI stewards had no choice. According to Bauman, Peters “accepted their decision gracefully.”

I feel terrible for Peters, who is an outstanding horseman and whose training methods are beyond reproach. He doesn’t need for me to defend his reputation, but I’ll put in my $.02 anyway.

 

A strong performance by the USA's Steffen Peters and Legolas put them in fourth place, but the pair was eliminated after blood was found on the horse's side after their Grand Prix Freestyle. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

The elimination is even sadder considering the fact that Peters had, in fact, placed fourth on a score of 80.286 percent. The notoriously spooky Legolas kept it together admirably in front of the exuberant crowd, although the 13-year-old Westfalen gelding (Laomedon x Florestan II) did lose it for a moment at the loud laughter that greeted the voice-over line at the beginning of the freestyle: “Hey, I’m Legolas. Let’s go!” His two-tempis were clean, although he missed a change in the ones; and a double pirouette directly into piaffe showed a high degree of difficulty. Peters got a standing ovation from the largely American crowd at the final halt and salute, which was punctuated by the voice-over words of “Legolas” saying, “Hey, let’s get out of here!”

The Vegas Experience

For Dujardin, Gal, von Bredow-Werndl, and Graves, this was their first trip to Sin City. All were in agreement that Las Vegas was living up to its glitzy image.

 

FEI World Cup Dressage Final title sponsor and haute couture fashion designer Reem Acra (center) poses with top-placed finishers Edward Gal, Charlotte Dujardin, Jessica von Bredow-Werndl, and Laura Graves. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

“It’s everything I thought it would be,” said Dujardin. “Seeing how crazy the Strip is; going to shows in the evening. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.”

“It’s not real!” exclaimed von Bredow-Werndl. “I go through the casino [hotel] at six in the morning and they’re playing loud music; I come to the arena and the people are going crazy.”

“It is very surreal,” Graves agreed. “I left the hotel very early this morning, before six o’clock, to come ride, and there was still a party in the bar.”

Although the Vegas lights and boisterous fans may have bolstered the energy level at the World Cup Dressage Final, at least one attendee said the thrill was entirely the result of the rush from seeing the best dressage in the world.

Said US FEI 5* judge Lilo Fore, who was the head of the ground jury for today’s freestyle final: “No matter how many years you sit in those [judges’] boxes, the excitement of seeing those good horses and riders never goes away.”

First-Ever Open Rehearsal Gives Audiences a Sneak Peek at World Cup Freestyle Finale

Under the watchful eyes of her coach, Debbie McDonald, and US dressage chef d'equipe Robert Dover, Laura Graves rehearses her freestyle aboard Verdades. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

Somebody at the International Equestrian Federation (FEI), which governs the Reem Acra FEI World Cup Dressage Final, figured out that enthusiasts will pay to watch riders rehearse their freestyles. In an early-morning VIP-ticketholder-only event, a hundred or so diehards clutched their coffees and watched the world's best riders (sometimes with horses, sometimes without) do their sound checks and run through some choreography in final preparations for tomorrow's Grand Prix Freestyle.

By virtue of earning scores over the 58-percent mark in yesterday's Grand Prix, all 18 competitors here in Las Vegas punched their freestyle tickets. The freestyle results alone will decide the 2015 World Cup Dressage Final champion. So everything's riding on the music, if you'll pardon the expression.

Some riders, including Britain's Charlotte Dujardin (who won yesterday's Grand Prix with Valegro), Dutchman Edward Gal (second with Glock's Undercover), and Germany's Isabell Werth (eighth with El Santo NRW), opted not to ride. They walked in, listened to their music being played over the Thomas & Mack Center's sound system, made any necessary comments to the audio coordinator, and left when satisfied.

Sweden's Malin Hamilton brought not her horse but her daughter to the sound check. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

Others, including third-placed Steffen Peters (Legolas 92) and Laura Graves (fifth with Verdades), rode partial or complete run-throughs. Peters rode pieces of his well-known "Under Pressure" freestyle, first in a warm-up outline; later, after having his music volume turned up, he put Legolas together and did a few lines of tempi changes on the diagonal and piaffe-passage transitions. Graves rode her entire freestyle after halting near H -- near the shiny World Cup Final trophy that scared him yesterday -- and feeding Diddy a sugar cube. The horse got a little backed off in the final piaffe-passage tour down center line, so that got repeated.

So what can I tell you about the freestyles? For starters, Malin Hamilton (pictured above) appropriately chose a Fleetwood Mac medley for her horse, Fleetwood. And if you didn't see it in Florida this winter, you're going to love Mikala Munter Gundersen's ride with My Lady to "All That Jazz," "Big Spender," and music from the movie Burlesque. The big, brassy tunes suit the big, brassy mare and her tempos very well.

The London Philharmonic shows up in a few routines, as does the artist Two Steps from Hell (I know this only because I was Shazam-ing the heck out of the soundtracks in an effort to learn the more obscure song titles). Agnete Kirk Thinggaard of Denmark would like for you to "Call Me Maybe." Russian Inessa Merkulova's soundtrack for Mister X is too cut-and-paste, with unrelated songs, for this music teacher's daughter's taste; but I loved him with the Bossa Nova -- very Mad Men. And Isabell Werth's music is fun -- David Bowie and Queen among the artists.

It's sure to be exciting. See you tomorrow for the big finale!

So Close...

For a heady few hours, it looked as if the USA was going to clinch the dressage team bronze medal at the 2014 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. But then Great Britain’s Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro came in and spoiled it all.

The five-member ground jury—including the USA’s own Lilo Fore—universally placed Dujardin and the twelve-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding (Negro x Gerschwin) first, with an average score of 85.271 percent. Sixth from last in the field of 100 horses, Valegro soundly beat the previous day’s front-runner, Bella Rose 2, ridden by Isabell Werth of Germany (81.529).

“I had a fantastic ride today,” Dujardin said of “Blueberry.” “He felt really, really good; he’s felt good all week. He went in and he really, really did perform.”

WEG team gold medalists Germany. From left: chef d'equipe Klaus Roeser, Kristina Sprehe, Fabienne Lutkemeier, Isabell Werth, Helen Langehanenberg, and head judge Stephen Clarke of Great Britain. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

But Dujardin’s stratospheric score wasn’t enough to knock the German team off the highest step of the medal podium. The all-women team (Helen Langehanenberg/Damon Hill NRW, 81.357; Kristina Sprehe/Desperados FRH, 78.814; Fabienne Lutkemeier/D’Agostino FRH, 73.586; and Werth) claimed the team gold medal with a total score of 241.700. And we should point out that the gold medal was theirs despite the injury and withdrawal of the horse considered Germany’s front-runner, the 2010 WEG gold medalist Totilas (under Dutchman Edward Gal) with current rider Matthias-Alexander Rath.

“We bought her as a three-year-old,” Werth said of Bella Rose 2, whom she says may be the best horse she’s ever ridden. (That’s saying a lot, considering Werth’s numerous Olympic and WEG appearances and medals, including gold ones, with such famous mounts as Gigolo and Satchmo.) “This is one of the diamonds you find in your life. I had the luck already with Gigolo and with Satchmo to have some diamonds, but she is really something special. She is so beautiful, so proud, with great charisma.” Bella Rose 2 is a ten-year-old Westfalen mare (Belissimo M x Cacir AA).

Team Great Britain (Carl Hester/Nip Tuck, 74.186; Michael Eilberg/Half Moon Delphi, 71.886; Gareth Hughes/DV Stenkjers Nadonna, 69.714; and Dujardin) took silver with 231.343. And even with two horse/rider combinations pinch-hitting at the last minute when team horses suffered injuries, the Netherlands (Adelinde Cornelissen/Jerich Parzival NOP, 79.629; Hans Peter Minderhoud/Glock’s Johnson TN, 74.357; Diederik van Silfhout/Arlando NOP; and Edward Gal/Glock’s Voice, 72.414) won team bronze over Team USA (227.400 vs. 222.714, respectively).

 

The bronze-medal winning Dutch team (Hans Peter Minderhoud, Edward Gal, Diederik van Silfhout, and Adelinde Cornelissen) shares a laugh at the post-medal-ceremony press conference. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

Judge Stephen Clarke, who was president of the ground jury for the team competition, said: “The whole thing was outstanding. It’s unbelievable that, year after year, the standard gets higher and higher, and our sport grows more and more. We should all be very excited and very positive about it.”

The US team of Steffen Peters/Legolas 92, Laura Graves/Verdades, Adrienne Lyle/Wizard, and Tina Konyot/Calecto V finished in the same order as at June’s WEG selection trials. Peters had the high score of 75.843, despite two mistakes in the one-tempi changes. As before, Graves was hot on his heels with 74.871, with her nemesis being “Diddy’s” apprehension of the TV cameras lurking between the judge’s booths, which caused him to stop dead momentarily during his extended walk. Lyle’s solid test aboard Wizard earned them a score of 72.000, and Konyot’s mostly solid test with Calecto V had a few small errors for 69.643.

 

Yikes! Verdades spies a monster in the bushes during his Grand Prix test with Laura Graves. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

If you were a horse, you'd be scared too. Glock's Voice and Edward Gal of the Netherlands negotiate the monster in the bushes, aka an FEI TV camera. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

According to Peters, he pushed the envelope with Legolas 92—and almost pulled it off. “The rest of the test was probably the best we’ve done,” he said afterward. “I really fought for my team, fought for my country. We risked everything. The extensions felt better than before, and we really went for it in the half-passes. The strong points are the piaffe-passage. A wonderful feeling—very supple, very energetic. We went for it in the one-tempis, and that’s where the mistake happened.”

 

One-tempis might be Legolas 92's Achilles heel, but this one looks just fine. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

Peters, who was hospitalized with pneumonia prior to the Aachen CHIO and was forced to withdraw from the competition, credited his wife, Shannon, with keeping both Legolas 92 and Rosamunde in top shape, riding until her husband was able to get back in the saddle. In fact, he said, Shannon uncovered a bit more suppleness in Legolas than Steffen even realized the horse had in him.

 

Floating: Laura Graves and Verdades show why they're putting the international dressage community on notice. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

For her part, Graves handled her first appearance on a truly international stage with grace. Saying she’s not normally a nervous competitor, she admitted: “When I was warming up, I said, ‘I have this pain in my stomach. I don’t get nervous.’ [US dressage chef d’équipe] Robert [Dover] said, ‘That’s nerves.’ I said, ‘I’m not nervous; I have a pain in my stomach.’ He said, ‘That’s what nerves are.’ So yeah, I was very nervous,” Graves concluded with a laugh.

In the twelve years Graves and “Diddy” have been together, she’s learned that he’s the type of horse that overreacts if he’s pushed when he’s scared. He’s an honest type who spooks only when he’s truly scared, so she knew there was no point in pushing him when he froze momentarily in the walk, she said of the twelve-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding (Florett AS x Goya) her mother found as a yearling.

“He has a lot of points to earn with his walk; he has a super walk, so whenever we miss it from tension like we did today, it’s a real bummer,” Graves said afterward. “Still, everything else…there were no mistakes in the changes and I’m super happy with how his piaffe is coming along. So I’m really proud to be here.”

Of the WEG experience, Graves said: “It just keeps feeling like the next step. This is the big boom you’ve been waiting for. When you find out you’re on the team, you kind of expect fireworks and rainbows falling from the sky. This [going in the WEG arena for the first time] is the big bang for me.”

The Peters Show

There was a bit of harrumphing on the grounds of the United States Equestrian Team Foundation Sunday, the final day of the 2014 USEF Dressage Festival of Champions, presented by the Dutta Corp.

"Well, that's a surprise," one spectator remarked sarcastically after Olympian Steffen Peters swept not one but two of the national titles up for grabs in Gladstone, New Jersey -- and also claimed the reserve championship in one of the divisions, for good measure.

Steffen Peters and Legolas 92 passage their way to Grand Prix Freestyle victory, in the process clinching the 2014 USEF National Grand Prix championship and the #1 spot on the US WEG dressage team. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

Riding Four Winds Farm's 12-year-old Westfalen gelding Legolas 92, Peters, of San Diego, CA, took the national Grand Prix title (as expected) with an overall average score of 76.036% -- which was given a healthy boost after Sunday's winning Grand Prix Freestyle score of 79.700%.

Peters had already visited the winner's circle earlier in the day, collecting the Intermediaire I national championship title with Four Winds Farm's newest superstar, the seven-year-old Rhinelander mare Rosamunde. He also took the reserve I-I title aboard the eight-year-old Oldenburg mare Apassionata, owned by Tracy Roenick, who led her mare into the Dick and Jane Brown Arena for the awards ceremony.

Perhaps the only equestrian skill Steffen Peters lacks is the ability to ride two horses at once. He's on Intermediaire I champion Rosamunde while owner Tracy Roenick handles his reserve-champion mount, her mare Apassionata. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

When a competitor is at the pinnacle of his or her career, it does sometimes seem as if victory is a foregone conclusion. But there are a couple of factors that need to be considered.

First, Steffen Peters is arguably the only American dressage competitor with a string of horses rivaling that of the top Europeans. Those riders don't have just one "big" horse to pin all their hopes and dreams on; they have perhaps five or 10 -- large tour, small tour, plus some talented youngsters. As former USEF national dressage technical advisor and current FEI 5* judge Anne Gribbons (who was on the ground jury at Gladstone this year) has pointed out, such depth not only gives the rider competitive options but also keeps him or her plenty busy going down center line. Not to say that the other riders at Gladstone aren't experienced, but Peters has more top horses than they do. All that showing experience counts for something -- perhaps evidenced by the fact that, while other riders said they were eating light (or not at all) before their tests, Peters was tucking into a nice hearty lunch of chicken and pasta before his Grand Prix Freestyle. (Nerves? What nerves?)

Second, if name recognition were a guarantee of top placings, then 26-year-old Grand Prix newbie Laura Graves would not have given Peters a run for his money -- and believe me, she did. Riding her 12-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding, Verdades, Graves was little more than one percentage point behind Peters in the Grand Prix Special and the GP Freestyle -- 74.549 vs. Peters' 75.647 in the Special, and 78.425 vs. 79.700 in the Freestyle. The judges placed Graves above 13 other riders, all of whom are much better known than she.

There are always going to be disagreements over scorings and placings. Some who were in the audience at Gladstone were disappointed that Olympic veterans Jan Ebeling and Rafalca's dynamic and difficult new freestyle was not rewarded with a score higher than the 76.150 it received. Caroline Roffman's fun, upbeat Katy Perry routine suits Her Highness O well, and some said they thought it ought to have scored higher than the 73.775 it received. And so it goes.

But don't take my word for it. Here's the video of Legolas 92's winning freestyle. What do you think? Did it deserve to win?

Click here for video