Canada’s Victoria Winter & Proton 1st, USA’s Lauren Sammis & Sagacious 2nd at Blainville CDI3* Grand Prix
15 years ago StraightArrow Comments Off on Canada’s Victoria Winter & Proton 1st, USA’s Lauren Sammis & Sagacious 2nd at Blainville CDI3* Grand Prix
BLAINVILLE, Quebec, June 17–Victoria Winter and Proton, riding for a place on Canada’s team for the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky, won the Grand Prix at Dressage at Blainville CDI3* Friday while the USA’s Lauren Sammis and Sagacious HF were a fraction behind in second place in their first appearance in the show ring in more than four months.
Victoria and Proton scored 66.681 per cent with Lauren and Sagacious, the 11-year-old Dutch gelding and Pan American Games gold medal winners, were second on 66.596 per cent U.S. Olympic and WEG veteran Sue Blinks and Robin Hood were third on 65.489 per cent.
The competition for Sagacious was his first since early this year when he sustained a muscle pull in his back and has been recovering while still maintaining condition in preparation for the U.S. WEG selection trials in Gladstone, New Jersey, in August.
“We came here to perform a really quiet, conservative test… nice and quiet,” said Lauren of South Orange, New Jersey.
“He was really, really good. I made an error in the one-tempis and a small mistake in the canter zig-zag. But he could not have been better.
“The muscle soreness that had caused the problems in the piaffe in January was not present. He was regular in the piaffe.”
Lauren is already qualified with Sagacious owned by Al Guden’s Hyperion Farm for the selection trials and she declared in advance the Blainville competition would not count.
“This was to get into the ring and ride through the patterns. We’re six weeks away from the trials so we’ll go home and work on some stuff with my coach, Ashley Holzer.”
She joked that she’s not telling Sagacious that the blue ribbon awarded in Blainville is for second place–in the U.S. it is for first.
In an indication of concerns over safety following horse accidents of U.S. Olympians Courtney King-Dye and Guenter Seidel this year, four of the six riders in the ribbons in the Grand Prix wore helmets in the competition instead of the traditional top hat.
Results in the Grand Prix:
1. Victoria Winter CAN Proton 66.681%
2. Lauren Sammis USA Sagacious HF 66.596%
3. Sue Blinks USA Robin Hood 65.489%
4. Jackie Brooks CAN Gran Gesto 65.277%
5. Jamie Irwin CAN Dover 64.894%
6. Ute Busse CAN Lindor’s Finest 64.511%
