Yvonne Losos de Muñiz Posts Career Best Grand Prix Score Riding Foco Loco to Wellington CDI3* Win & Likely World Cup Final Invite
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By KENNETH J. BRADDICK
WELLINGTON, Florida, Mar. 1, 2018–Yvonne Losos de Muñiz posted a career best Grand Prix score when she rode Foco Loco W to victory in the Global Dressage Festival CDI3* Thursday that was likely enough to become the first rider from the Dominican Republic to earn an invitation to the World Cup Final.
The score of 71.130 per cent for Yvonne and the 13-year-old Belgian Warmblood gelding appears certain to be enough to rank the pair the highest from a country not included in an established World Cup league and thus qualified to fill one of the 18 starting places in Paris next month.
“I would love the opportunity to go to the World Cup Final in Paris,” Yvonne told dressage-news.com.
“It would be an historic achievement for the country and the region.
“And it’s especially rewarding to have done it on the horse I supposedly could not ride.”
The victory was the third for the combination at this year’s Global Dressage Festival.
Yvonne competed Foco Loco at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. She rode in four Pan American Games, medaling on Inatana in 2003 and Bernstein las Marismas in 2007.
Yvonne, who lives in Wellington in winter and Spain in summer, had put Foco Loco up for sale after the Olympics as he was too difficult to ride.
But she sought help from German trainer Ton de Ridder who has coached her during this year’s winter circuit with the best results of more than a decade in international competition.
She has already qualified both Foco Loco and Aquamarijn, her 13-year-old KWPN mare, for the World Equestrian Games in Tryon, North Carolina.
She is the first Dominican Republic rider to compete at the Olympics and looks likely to be the first from her country to go to a World Cup Final and the world championships held once every four years.
