Germany hold the lead after day one of the Helgstrand-sponsored team dressage competition at the World Equestrian Games in Tryon, with Great Britain sitting fourth.
Super tests from Germany’s opening two pairs, Jessica von Bredow-Werndl on TSF Dalera BB and Dorothee Schneider on Sammy Davis Jr, banked Germany scores of 76.67% and 75.06% which places them at the top of the leaderboard overnight.
Sweden currently hold the silver medal spot with Tinne Vilhelmson Silfven and Don Auriello posting 73.1% and Juliette Ramel and Buriel KH earning 75.25%. The USA have slotted into the bronze medal position with scores of 73.45% and 74.86% from Steffen Peters (Suppenkasper) and Adrienne Lyle (Salvino) respectively.
Britain are currently sitting in fourth place; Spencer Wilton’s 74.5% with Super Nova II was followed by Emile Faurie posting 72.79% with Hof Kasselmann’s 11-year-old Dimaggio gelding, Dono Di Maggio (pictured above).
Their test was full of highlights, with the Dono’s elevated, energetic passage receiving high marks, but the odd mistake crept in, including a double beat behind in the one-time changes, and Emile was fairly disappointed with the performance as a whole.
“It’s a massive atmosphere in there and he went a bit into himself and didn’t shine quite as much as I know he can,” Emile explained. “He’s such a wonderful horse and I would have loved to have put in a better score for the team but that’s life. He’s still quite young, with relatively little experience — this was only his 11th grand prix — and he’s never seen anything like this before.”
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The team competition in Tryon, North Carolina, continues tomorrow with Carl Hester the first on for the Brits, riding his own, Ann Cory and Anne Evans’ Hawtins Delicato at 11.10am (4.10pm UK time). Charlotte Dujardin will be the final British rider to compete, going at 5.51pm (10.51pm UK time) with Emma and Jill Blundell’s Mount St John Freestyle.
Ireland’s Judy Reynolds, competing as an individual with Vancouver K (pictured below), is currently lying 12th having posted 71.96%.
“I’m happy overall but there were more glitches than I would have liked, and it just didn’t have the smoothness I wanted,” said Judy, who has only completed two grands prix tests this year with “JP”, the Jazz gelding having been out for a full year with injury. “We had a mistake in the twos, which was my fault; he was backing off the camera in the corner and I used too much spur. There was a lot of good stuff in there though, so fingers crossed it’s enough for us to get through to the special.”
Horse & Hound has two journalists and a photographer in Tryon for WEG. Keep up to date with all the news on horseandhound.co.uk and in the magazine issues dated 20 and 27 September.
