Dressage-News

By KENNETH J. BRADDICK

WELLINGTON, Florida, Jan. 11, 2018–Sweden’s seven-time Olympian Tinne Vilhelmson Silfvén rode Paridon Magi to a personal best score to win the Adequan Global Dressage Festival World Cup Grand Prix Thursday to move closer to competing at the Paris Final in April.

Tinne and Paridon Magi in their third World Cup event to qualify for Paris since earning bronze on Sweden’s team at the European Championships last August, scored  75.870 per cent for the win that felt the best the horse had ever gone.

he 2018 Global winter circuit kickoff of seven CDIs provided ideal conditions, Florida weather in January of blue skies and temperatures of 80F/26.6C.

“To have the super feeling I had with him… it was a good one.”

Shelly Francis on Danilo was second on 72.652 per cent, hours after the American team rider won the CDI3* Grand Prix on Doktor with a personal best score.

Canada’s Jill Irving on Degas also posted a personal best 71.826 per cent for third place. Jill had taken Arthur on whom she placed third in the CDI3* to Europe with Degas last summer.

However, the ride that had spectators leaning on the arena rails watching avidly was that of Tinne and Paridon Magi, just one of the Grand Prix mounts for the rider who is regarded here as both a star and hugely popular–as admired and appreciated as any American in the heart of United States dressage.

Her other horses include the stallion Benetton Dream FRH and Don Auriello, the Hanoverian gelding that was her 2012 Olympic mount and went on to the 2014 World Equestrian Games and the 2016 Olympics. Tinne is hopeful the 16-year-old whose first competition was in Florida in 2011 will soon return to competition for the first time in 18 months.

Paridon Magi, ranked No 20 in the world with Tinne, is her preferred amount at this stage for the World Cup Final in Paris dancing to the music and choreography created by Cees Slings.

The horse is not yet decided for the World Equestrian Games in Tryon, North Carolina in September.

Highlights of the ride, Tinne said, was the attitude and open-mindedness of Paridon Magi who “was on the work and on my aids and really trying so I had a great feeling.”

The focus of working with Paridon Magi since she became the full-time rider at the end of 2016–she had shared competition rides with her assistant Caroline Darcourt before then–was for both of them getting to know each other, or as she described it, “companionship.”

“It’s was perfect to start off like this,” she said. As she can claim only the full points from one World Cup qualifier outside her Western European League she will wait to see where she stands but is tentatively planning for the $200,000 CDI5*.

Tinne works out of Lövsta Stuteri in Wellington, the stables owned by Antonia Ax:son Johnson for whom Tinne works and one of the major sponsors in the world of dressage including the Central Park Horse Show and an invitational event at last year’s European Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden where the Florida-based Spanish rider Juan Matute, Jr was a star. This year, Lövsta Stuteri brought eight horses brought to Florida for this season. Tinne will stay until mid-March before returning to Europe for stallion shows.

Being in Wellington for winters, she said, “it’s just the perfect way to compete and train and do it on the same spot again and again.”

The climate makes the horses feel better and healthier training here than at home in winter,” Tinne said, “the best possibilities to show.

“What more can you ask for?”

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