Top British dressage riders demonstrate their talent in an elite dressage competition in the Middle East
Emile Faurie, Carl Hester, Richard Barrett, Spencer Wilton and Penny Grannon travelled to Dubai to take part in the first elite dressage competition to be held in the Middle East.
The British riders were paired with local riders at the Maktoum International Show at the Dubai Equestrian Centre. The local riders rode the tests first before passing their horses on to their British partner, who had 20mins to get to know their mount before riding the same test. The scores of the two riders were then combined.
At the end of the first day, Emile, paired withAnna Rosenburgh from Abu Dhabi on Meshrakh’s Iwan, took the honours. Carl, riding Christine Khairallah’s Gigolo, obtained a score of 70.7%, which was good enough for second place.
On the second day, Living Star, ridden by Dubai EC instructorChristopher Cyra, took an early lead with 65.6%, before Emile achieve a well-earned 72.1% with the horse, to take first place again.
Carl had his work cut out when Rebecca Sternvad had a tense and difficult ride on the former Thoroughbred racehorse, Shawar, achieving a score of only 57.5%.
Carl’s ability was clear as he improved the horse’s score by 8.5%, which put them into fourth place and helped Carl gain the prize for achieving the biggest improvement in the scores of the horses over the two days of competition.
On the final day, Carl and Emile performed a pas de deux to music, again on borrowed horses, in front of an audience including Queen Rania of Jordan.
Read more international competition news intoday’s Horse & Hound (28 February), which also includes 24 pages of show dates.
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