Dressage-News

By KENNETH J. BRADDICK

WELLINGTON, Florida, Mar. 17, 2019–Spain’s 17-year-old made American history Sunday when she won the Global Dressage Festival CDI Junior Freestyle with what appears to be the highest ever international score for the level in the United States.

Natalia rode Dhannie Ymas that she has competed for a year on both sides of the Atlantic to a score of 78.208 per cent. Of the three judges, American FEI 5* Janet Lee Foy gave her the highest mark, 80.875 per cent. A search by dressage-news.com of available records did not turn up a higher result in the U.S.

Dhannie Ymas is a 12-year-old Hanoverian gelding that Natalia rode in the 2018 European Junior Championships on the Spanish team that included her best friend Julia Álvarez Abad and placed fourth. Natalia also competed at the 2016 Europeans.

She expected better results this year after a year of competing Dhannie as the horse has gained more confidence with her.

Dhannie Ymas had been competed by Juan Matute Guimon, a longtime resident with his family in Wellington who now is at university in Madrid and rode Dhannie to his highest score of 81.600 per cent to win Freestyle gold at the 2015 European Junir Championships. His father, the three-time Spanish Olympian Juan Matute based in Wellington, is Natalia’s coach.

This was her last competition with Dhannie on the 12-week Global winter circuit.

Natalia is finishing high school and plans to go to Europe to compete in the European Junior Championships and then the Spanish Championships as the last year she can show as a junior.

However, she plans to do online college so she can keep riding.

Her closest friends are in the dressage world–aside from Julia Abad they include Californians Benjamin Ebeling, a young rider and son of 2012 Olympic rider Jan Ebeling who winters in Florida, and Christian Simonson.

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