Dressage-News

By KENNETH J. BRADDICK

TRYON, North Carolina, April 22, 2018–Kasey Perry-Glass and Dublet posted a personal best score to win the CDI3* Grand Prix Special Sunday to wrap up a successful World Equestrian Games test event and earn a trip to Europe to seek a place on the American team for the world championships in September.

Kasey who had given herself and the 15-year-old Danish Warmblood gelding a break of eight months after an intense three years of competition that culminated in an Olympic team bronze medal, scored 75.830 per cent in the Special following their victory two days ago in the Grand Prix on 73.935 per cent.

Adrienne Lyle on Horizon, the 11-year-old Oldenburg mare that began CDI Grand Prix just a month ago, placed second on 71.660 per cent. This was only the second time the pair had performed the Special in an international competition.

Belinda Trussell, one of Canada’s most successful international competitors with two Olympics and three World Games to her credit, rode Tattoo into third place on 69.319 per cent. She, too, is campaigning to return here in September for the World Games of dressage, driving, endurance, eventing, jumping, reining, vaulting and para-dressage.

An estimated 1,000 horses from around the globe will compete over two weeks of the world championships, staged once every four years and for only the second time in the United States, with six previous editions held in Europe.

“With any athlete, you need time to wind down, readjust and get your head right,” Kasey, 30, based in Wellington, Florida, explained of her absence from competition for several months. “We had been going for the past three years and it was a well-needed rest. We started showing later than every one else… for us it really worked.”

Kasey, 30, campaigned in the United States and Europe at small tour in 2015 along with the American squad that won team gold at the Pan American Games, then repeated the effort in 2016 to make the team for Rio de Janeiro to win bronze, America’s first Olympic medal since 2004. The pair returned to Florida’s intense winter circuit in 2017 then again went to Europe to win gold at the Nations Cup in Rotterdam and silver in Aachen, Germany.

The top Grand Prix mount for Adrienne, 33, of Ketchum Idaho, is Salvino that she will be taking to Europe this summer along with Horizon. This weekend, she also made a successful debut of Harmony’s Duval at Grand Prix, in national classes, one judged by two 5* judges.

She described the performances by Horizon, like Salvino owned by Elizabeth Juliano, as showing how “reliable” the mare has become in competition. To produce the rides Horizon did this week, she said, was “a big deal” in the mare’s brief Big Tour career so far.

Belinda Trussell said that her big moving Tattoo was getting stronger and showed his best passage work this week.

Results:

CDI3* Grand Prix Special