Dressage-News

By KENNETH J. BRADDICK

VERDEN, Germany, Aug. 6, 2015–In what may have been the highest quality ever five-year-old world young horse championships, the Danish-bred Fiontini ridden by Spain’s Severo Jurado won the first qualifying competition Thursday against horses from around the world that needed an unprecedented score of better than 8.74 to make the cut for the final.

The Danish Warmblood mare (Fassbinder x Blue Hors Romanov) scored 9.48 that included 10 for trot, the only top mark of the entire competition of 43 combinations from around the globe. The score for Fiontini was made up 8.1 for walk, 9.8 for canter, 9.7 for rideability and 9.8 for final impression as well as the 10 for trot.

Fiontini came into the competition amidst considerable buzz.

Charlotte Dujardin, the double Olympic gold medal rider, had declared while riding the horse during the Danish stallion selection trials in March that, “I would give the horse 11… or 100” and wanted to take her home to Britain.

Fiontini is also the full sister to Fiontina ridden by Andreas Helgstrand who placed eighth on 8.86. Both horses were by embryo transfer. Severo, the rider of Fiontini, is a rider for Andreas in Denmark and both mares are at his training center.

The 26-year-old Severo began riding Fiontini when the mare was four.

He was, he said, as proud of the rideability score of 9.7 for rideability as the 10 for trot because that was a reflection his ability and not necessarily the talent of the horse. His rideability score was the highest of any rider in the competition.

“I think people can see what I feel,” he said, “the power, going easy… a happy horse who is quite eager.”

Severo rode for Spain in the European Junior & Young Rider Championships moved to Germany as a teenager to train for three years and another couple of years in Holland before moving to Denmark to take the opportunity of riding top horses with Andreas.

Five Star 2, the KWPN stallion (Amazing Star 2 x Jazz) and ridden by Dutch young horse star Kirsten Brouwer placed second on 9.44.

The score for Kirsten and Five Star included 9.7 for trot, 9.5 for trot, 9.3 for canter, 9.2 for rideability and 9.5 for final impression.

She also qualified Ferdeaux, a KWPN stallion (Bordeaux x Ferro) with a score of 8.94 for seventh place. She was one of only two riders to take two places in the top 12, the other being Severo on Franklin who finished ninth on 8.84.

Four Legends, another KWPN stallion (Wynton x Ferro) and ridden by Marieke van der Putten was third on 9.32.

Only the top 12 of the 43 horses that started the competition move into the final Saturday but three of the combinations to battle it out in a “small” final Friday will be added to the start list,

Endel Ots of Wellington, Florida on Lucky Strike was the top finishing of the three non-Europeans with a personal best international result of 8.6 that put the pair in 15th place, three shy of the cutoff for direct entry to the final so will ride in the “small” final Friday.

The European-based Australian Simone Alexandra Pearce on Felicia scored 8.04 for 27th place while F-1 ridden by New Zealand’s Shiwon Green in that country’s first ever entry in these championships was eliminated shortly after the ride began when the horse was obviously lame.

Susanne Baarup of Denmark, president of the ground jury, described the quality of so many of the horses as “amazing” and “fantastic” with a succession of combinations displaying gaits that making the task of

“The breeding is getting stronger,” she told dressage-news.com, “the riding is very high quality. The breeders are selecting better mares for their preferred stallions.”

The production of such high quality young horses, some observers said, showed that breeding in Europe had recovered in terms of quality from the economic downturn of 2008 that devastated the industry. Breeders focused on breeding fewer horses but at higher quality.