H&H’s dressage editor rounds up how things stand on British selection for the World Championships, with the team to be named in mid-July
British selection for the dressage at the 2026 World Championships in Aachen in August will come into focus over the next few weeks, with a team announcement expected in mid-July. The selectors – Judy Harvey, Jenny Ward and Anne Keen – have watched the contenders across a season of internationals, and with the major trials now behind us, Hartpury CDI3* (1–5 July) will be a last chance to shift the margins rather than being where this gets decided.
On paper, it’s a more settled picture than my colleague Pippa Roome found in the eventing: three combinations look certain of their places, leaving a single spot up for a real scrap. Not that certainty is ever quite that – as Charlotte Dujardin’s withdrawal days before the Paris Olympics reminded us, a team can be reshaped overnight – but you would be brave to bet against the top three.
The only doubt after last summer’s Europeans would’ve been whether Carl would go for another season on Fame. But they allayed those concerns early in the season, winning convincingly in Doha in February. Since then, they’ve competed on the Nations Cup team at Fontainebleau and last time out, at Wellington CDI3*, the now 16-year-old stallion produced within 0.2% of his best-ever scores in both the grand prix and freestyle, which he posted at the Riesenbeck Europeans in 2023. They’re a shoo-in.
As are Lottie and Glamourdale. Little doubt there, of course – though some had wondered whether the 15-year-old stallion was a fraction past his best, with the piaffe a worry; actively breeding stallions tend to peak early in their grand prix career and struggle to hold it into their later teens. But Lottie and Glamourdale put that debate to rest in December, winning the London World Cup qualifier on 89.17% – “one of the best tests he’s ever done”, according to Lottie – then backing it up at Amsterdam and ’s-Hertogenbosch.
The run brought successive 80%+ grands prix for the first time since 2022, a striking turnaround from his sub-76% at the Europeans, and the only pair to beat them all season has been world number ones Justin Verboomen and Zonik Plus – by margins as fine as 0.2% and 0.4%. Whisper it, but a few in ’s-Hertogenbosch felt Glamourdale shaded it on the day. Another 80%+ grand prix outdoors at the Fontainebleau Nations Cup leaves little doubt the pair are in career-best form.
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Becky and Jagerbomb have been cutting their own path, including a three-show outing on the World Cup qualifier circuit, which ultimately bagged their place at the Texas final, where they won on a new personal best of 88.33%. That was in April; since then, Becky has taken Jagerbomb’s recovery from his trans-Atlantic trip very seriously (she talks us through it on the upcoming episode of the H&H podcast). But after a couple of weeks off in the field and a couple of weeks hacking, he was back out last week at Rotterdam CDI4* (June 18–20), and despite a couple of mistakes in the grand prix costing him another win, he looked in great condition.
That left a host of options, most clustered in the low 70s: national champions Sadie Smith and Swanmore Dantina, my early favourites; championship stalwarts Gareth Hughes and Laura Tomlinson on up-and-coming rides Mowgli-Olympia MC and Full Moon II; Lewis Carrier and the experienced Diego V; or German-based Susan Pape on Harmony’s Giulilanta; even Annabella Pidgley on former Olympic medallist Gio, since selected for the under-25 European squad instead.
But the two pairs averaging the highest grand prix marks in the chasing pack have been Charlotte, on Ellie McCarthy’s 12-year-old gelding Brave Heart II, and Fiona Bigwood on her own 10-year-old mare Donna Bella X.
Donna Bella X is bred in the purple, and homebred: she is out of Atterupgaards Orthilia, Fiona’s former ride on the British team that took silver at both the 2015 Europeans in Aachen and the Rio Olympics the following year.
But ask me last summer, and neither would have been on my radar – Charlotte wasn’t on Brave Heart yet, and Donna Bella had only a couple of green grands prix to her name.
Donna Bella’s rise has been rapid. Runner-up on 70.62% at Vale View Premier League at the turn of the year, she announced herself at Hartpury CDI3* in March, taking the grand prix on 72.22% to beat Gareth and Mowgli. That earned a Nations Cup call-up at Fontainebleau alongside Carl and Lottie – a clear signal she was in the frame – and the bigger atmosphere didn’t faze her, the pair scoring a solid 71.63%.
Charlotte, meanwhile, hadn’t run Brave Heart since Kronenberg the previous November (72.8%), and it was unclear whether they’d put themselves forward – though grand prix wins of 76.85% and 74.13% on low-key local March outings raised the possibility. She still had Alive And Kicking then though, so that would’ve been her expected route onto the team. But as the key trials at Hickstead and Wellington approached in May and June, it had begun to look like a two-horse race.
Across both shows, most contenders were in action, and at each, Fiona and Charlotte went head to head. At Hickstead, Fiona and Donna Bella edged it, winning on 73.13% to Charlotte and Brave Heart’s 72.8% in second – close enough that much still rested on Wellington CDI3* earlier this month.
There, Fiona and Donna Bella climbed higher still, scoring 74.6% to finish behind winners Carl and Fame, with Charlotte and Brave Heart third on 71.87%, Sadie and Swanmore Dantina fourth (71.44%), and Gareth and Mowgli fifth (71.39%).
That makes Fiona and Donna Bella the clear favourites for the fourth spot, and I’d be all but certain the team will be Fame, Glamourdale, Jagerbomb and Donna Bella. But the real headline is how far Britain has come: that we can leave a pool of reserves this strong on the sidelines – enough to field a B team, maybe even a C, to rival most other nations – says everything about the strength in depth we now have.
Who do you think should make the British selection for the dressage World Championships? Write to hhletters@futurenet.com for your views to be considered for publication in a future issue of the magazine or online. Please include your postal address (only town and county will be printed). Letters may be edited for clarity and length.
Oscar joined Horse & Hound in October 2023 and is the magazine’s dressage editor and sports manager, overseeing coverage of equestrian sport. After studying equine science at Myerscough College, he spent four years working for leading dressage rider Emile Faurie, competing at the 2015 National Dressage Championships and travelling with the yard to CDIs including Aachen and Saumur. He holds a master’s degree in Literature from York St John University (2021).
