Dressage-News

By KENNETH J. BRADDICK

WELLINGTON, Florida, Feb. 22, 2020–Steffen Peters rode Suppenkasper to a personal best score to win the Adequan Global Dressage Festival CDI5* Grand Prix Special Saturday for the eighth straight win this year in the American rider’s pursuit of a fifth Olympics.

Steffen of San Diego, California and the 12-year-old KWPN gelding were awarded 77.106% for the win that also makes the pair the highest ranked on U.S. qualifying for the Tokyo Games so far. Steffen and “Mopsie,” as Suppenkasper is nicknamed, are also the leading North American combination qualified for the World Cup Final in Las Vegas in mid-April.

Brittany Fraser-Beaulieu and All In, Canada’s top ranked combination, also posted a personal best of 73.447% to put her on track to be selected for her first Olympic team.

Sabine Schut-Kery of Thousand Oaks, California on Sanceo was third on 72.979%.

“It felt really good for him still after four shows now to still have this energy is just incredible,” Steffen said after the ride that showed only one mistake, in the one-tempi changes. “He’s done six tests without a mistake so today he was allowed one and I’m not sure it was his mistake, there is always the rider involved, too. 

‘There was still another test in there afterwards. The horse has so much go it’s incredible. I did not push him for one single extension–in fact I was still holding back a little bit.”

Steffen joked about a slight problem he had.

“Let’s be honest, dressage is such a serious sport and once in a while you’ve got to bring a sense of humor so when I was tightening the girth on the outside, I just did not feel comfortable with my underwear the way it was sitting so for the whole time when I came in, that’s what I was thinking about and, thank God, it didn’t cause me more trouble than just a missed one tempi (change).”

He said he knew there’s a 77% in there and “we’re slowly and consistently creeping up a bit so without the mistake in the one-tempis it would have been even higher, so very exciting to see ‘Mopsie’ getting a 77%.”

Brittany Fraser-Beaulieu, who was out of the saddle for much of 2019 to give birth to her first child, said she had a warm-up of only 15 minutes.

Maybe, she said, it was “a little bit too short but again he came out feeling better than ever and I thought the passage was pretty incredible today.”

She said that she pushed too hard in trying to beat Steffen that caused mistakes in extensions.

But for she and her partner that were on Canada’s silver medal team at the 2015 Pan American Games and the 2018 World Equestrian Games have two personal best 73% scores this week was “very exciting.”

“I actually feel like there’s more in there from him so that’s very exciting leading up to Tokyo,” she said.

The next competition for the pair will be the Nations Cup in mid-March.

Sabine Schut-Kery, who also rode Sanceo in the same 2015 Pan Ams in Toronto as Brittany, said the duo had “a really nice canter tour” that they were able to recover from a shaky start.

“I am actually really happy and I have to say I’d rather have him hot than the other way round and I also have to remember that he really hasn’t done that many grand prix,” she said.  With this CDI5*, the pair have competed in only eight Grand Prix shows since the 2015 Pan Ams at Small Tour.

Results:

CDI5* Grand Prix Special