Will Coleman has taken top spot after the first day of Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event dressage, riding Diabolo.
The home side rider scored 27.3 with the syndicate-owned 14-year-old, who won the CCI4*-S here in 2024 and is tackling his first five-star. Will had a two-point deduction on his score for halting in the wrong place at the end of his test.
“Diabolo is a learner – he really likes to be taught things and has a real conscience about everything that he does,” said Will, who acquired the horse in 2023 from the Tinney family in Australia.
“He really wants to be a good boy, but there’s a little bit of anxiety because of that. So it’s really teaching him to have confidence in himself and have confidence in what we’re asking him to do. I think now he’s starting to get that and he has a real presence about him, an energy that I think is pretty cool.”
Will Coleman admitted after his Kentucky Three-Day Event dressage test that the horse became a little excited and he didn’t feel he was totally with him in his final warm-up, but said he focused in the arena.
He said: “He did his job as best he could. There’s little things I’d love to clean up, but I can’t be anything but proud of him. I just really, really adore this horse.”
Phillip Dutton sits second on 28.1 with the syndicate-owned Possante, whose test was marred only by a spook early on. The 13-year-old was previously called Imposant and produced by Emily King.
“We struggled a little bit when I first got him,” Phillip admitted. “I’ve had him for quite a few years now and it’s starting to come together.
“He’s a kind horse, he wants to do the right thing and he’s not trying to get out of things. It’s just that he’s a bit bigger and it’s taken a while to get him quicker footed and secure in what he does.”
US Olympian Phillip added that Possante is very horse shy, saying: “I’ve now figured out it’s just a case of trying to keep him on his own and not letting him get wound up with the other horses coming at him.
“They’ve all got their quirks and, especially once you get to this level, you’ve got to try to work around those to get the best out of them.”
New Zealand’s Tim Price holds third, having punched in the first sub-30 dressage test today on Lance and Diana Morrish’s Global Quest, a horse he said he rides in honour of his former rider, the late Georgie Campbell.
“He’s not God’s gift to dressage – he’s quite a big horse and he finds it all quite difficult, but he was relaxed and giving as much of himself as he could,” said Tim.
“The naturally big, flamboyant horses can be on mud, they can be on grass, but ones that are really working at their maximum in terms of the movements and pushing through their bodies in the right way [really benefit from the fact] we’ve got such consistent surfaces all the way through to the main ring here.”
Tim added that the break the horses have with the journey and quarantine – they left the UK last Wednesday, arrive at the Kentucky Horse Park on Saturday evening and do gentle work to ease back in on Sunday and Monday – also freshens the horses’ bodies up, “especially for a horse like him because physically he has to work really hard”.
Two Brits in top six
Harry Meade sits fourth with Superstition, while fellow Brit David Doel is in sixth on 30.8 with Galileo Nieuwmoed, owned by his rider, Mary Fox and Gillian Jonas.
“I’m absolutely stoked,” said David. “We just had one small blip going up the centreline towards the end when he put in some lovely tempi changes, which was costly, but the rest was one of his nicest tests.
“We’ve not probably worked him quite as hard as sometimes – we’ve done a little bit more jumping, a bit more canter work, especially this week. We’ve kept it all pretty loose and relaxed.
“We came here three years ago and I think I tightened up when I went in there for the dressage and and he tightened up as well. We really made sure that we stayed nice and loose and relaxed.
“I’ve got Nick Turner out here, my trainer, and had a little bit of help from British performance manager Dickie Waygood as well and that worked really well today.”
The third British horse to perform today, Plot Twist B, shares the bottom of the leaderboard with New Zealand’s Sophia Hill and Humble Glory, but rider Tom Jackson said he was pleased with how this tense horse coped.
“He’s an incredibly spooky, nervy horse, so for him in there is utterly terrifying. So for him to stay as with me as he did, even with a couple of spooks, was generally quite pleasing,” said Tom.
“We’ve just tried to acclimatise him to this whole area as much as possible in a really chilled out way over the past few days and I think on the whole, it’s worked.
“There’s still room for lots of improvements. He’s only 11 and hopefully we can keep building on that and get him more confident in those environments, because he’s more than capable.”
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