Newly Created California Dressage Circuit of 4 World Cup Events Offers Record Prize Money for USA West Coast
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Nov. 14, 2017
By KENNETH J. BRADDICK
The newly created West Coast Coast Dressage Festival is offering record prize money of a total of $120,000 for four World Cup events in Southern California over the first seven weeks of 2018.
Each of the shows lists $30,000 prize money beginning with Temecula Jan. 3-6 then three competitions at Del Mar–Jan. 18-21, Feb. 1-4 and Feb. 15-18–organized by Canadian entrepreneur Scott Hayes who has organized events in America for dressage stars Charlotte Dujardin and Carl Hester.
Prize money for the lineup of events is considerably higher than previous years in California, according to research by dressage-news.com through records going back to 2006.
In the past decade, the year with the most prize money for California was less than a total of $30,000 spread over five different CDIs in 2010.
The new circuit has led to many riders committing to stay on the West Coast rather than heading east to the Global Dressage Festival in Wellington, Florida at least until mid-February.
Total prize money for the seven Global shows was $664,400 in 2017, and included four World Cup events as well as CDI5* and CDI4* along with a Nations Cup.
The schedules for 2018 puts the CDI5* week Feb. 7-11–it had $232,700 prize money last winter–sandwiched between the third and fourth West Coast events.
Adequan is the title sponsor for both the West Coast and Global festivals.
Other sponsors of the California shows include Akiko Yamazaki and Four Winds Farm, owners of horses competed by Steffen Peters and Legolas by Dawn White-O’Connor; Mary’s Tack & Feed; Jen and Bruce Hlavacek Weltino’s Magic Memorium; Leverage Legal Group and SPeters Dressage (Steffen and Shannon Peters).
The West Coast Dressage Festival is the latest in a string of efforts to rebuild high performance competition in Southern California that is the home of Olympic and championship team riders Steffen Peters, Günter Seidel, Jan Ebeling, Kathleen Raine, Leslie Morse, Sabine Schut-Kerry, Maria Festerling, Kristina Harrison-Naness and others.
The Global Dressage Festival was launched as a companion to the Winter Equestrian Festival of jumpers and hunters at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center in February 2012. Growth of jumper and hunter shows as well as dressage has exploded in Wellington that plans have been drawn up to mover Global to a few facility on the grounds of the nearby International Polo Club that is owned by the same group of owners of PBIEC.
