Olivia LaGoy-Weltz & Lonoir Win Special in Dutta Corp. Grand Prix Championship
7 years ago StraightArrow Comments Off on Olivia LaGoy-Weltz & Lonoir Win Special in Dutta Corp. Grand Prix Championship
By KENNETH J. BRADDICK
GLADSTONE, New Jersey, May 19, 2017–Olivia LaGoy-Weltz and Lonoir won the Grand Prix Special in the Dutta Corp. United States championships Friday with less than 0.7 percentage points separating the top three with only the Freestyle to go to decide the title.
Olivia and Lonoir scored 70.686 per cent for the win with Adrienne Lyle and Salvino placing second on 70.314 per cent.
The Olympic team combination of Kasey Perry-Glass and Dublet incurred uncharacteristic mistakes that resulted in a score of 68.529 per cent, but still enough to maintain the overall lead of the championships of the Grand Prix, the Special and the Freestyle, though by a slim margin–0.681 per cent separating the top three.
Kasey and Dublet’s total so far is 60.577, with Olivia and Lonoir on 59.954 and Adrienne and Salvino 59.896. The freestyle scheduled for Sunday counts for 15 per cent of the total.
Olivia of Haymarket, Virginia who placed third on the 13-year-old Danish Warmblood gelding in the Grand Prix Thursday, said after the ride, “we’re just getting used to the Special, just starting to know it. The more he shows the better he gets.”
The highlight, she said, was “the harmony; just the fact he’s getting through it without any issues.”
Adrienne and the 10-year-old stallion that was bought by an American syndicate as a successor to her 2012 Olympic mount Wizard said that like Olivia she hopes to go to Europe this summer to compete, a program at the top levels of U.S. dressage that has grown enormously in the past three years.
Adrienne, of Ketchum, Idaho who has shown the Hanoverian stallion lightly in national events as well and one CDI at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival in Wellington over the winter, said Salvino was “showing great potential for higher scores” with the way he has handled the two major events of his career so far–the Global CDI and this national championship.
PJ Rizvi of Greenwich, Connecticut was third on Breaking Dawn, the horse she owns and that Ashley Holzer competed for Canada at the 2012 Olympics. Ashley now rides for America.
“He’s a very special horse,” she said of Breaking Dawn that “acts like he’s six years old and not 16.”
Results:
