Dressage-News

By KENNETH J. BRADDICK

WELLINGTON, Florida, Jan. 15, 2021–Olivia LaGoy-Weltz and Lonoir posted their highest score in almost four years to win the Global Dressage Festival World Cup Grand Prix Friday in the first international event for the American team partnership in a year.

Olivia and the 17-year-old Danish Warmblood gelding scored 73.978%, the second highest score behind their result of 74.580% on the U.S. gold medal Nations Cup team at Rotterdam in 2017.

Great Britain’s Susan Pape on Harmony’s Don Noblesse posted a personal best score of 73.022% to place second, the second day in a row the rider has logged a personal best result as they did in the CDI3* Grand Prix Thursday on Harmony’s Eclectisch. The previous best for Susan, based in Germany and a regular competitor in Wellington in winter, and the 14-year-old Hanoverian stallion was 71.739% posted in Hamburg, Germany in June 2019.

Yvonne Losos De Muñiz of Dominican Republic on Aquamarijn also logged a personal best 71.717% for third place. The pair’s previous best was 70.761% from a year ago at this same show grounds.

Olivia, of Haymarket, Virgina, said she was still deciding with her coach, Olympian Allison Brock, and Debbie McDonald, the U.S. team coach, whether to campaign for both a World Cup start and for selection to the American team for the Tokyo Olympics.

All the more remarkable for the partnership that Olivia, of Haymarket, Virginia, describes as Lonoir’s desire to perform at the top of the sport despite a botched shoeing two years ago that was feared to be career-ending for the horse that Olivia owns with Mary Anne McPhail, a long-time sponsor of American dressage.

Olivia rode in a national competition a week ago to “shake out the bats,” as she seeks to push Lonoir to the next level of performance.

“There is so much in there but we always ride a fine line with him, and I’ve kept him quiet for so many years, but there is a lot of horse in there,” she said. “The goal was to push that more today. We did, we had a few costly baubles, in the zigzag and in the pirouette, but I can fix that next time.”

She said her coaches reported Lonoir that she competed at international Small Tour seven years ago before moving up to Grand Prix in 2016 “has never looked better, and that’s a good place to start, so we want to keep going from there. ”

The duo, she said, spent the summer with a lot of hacking and hills with a goal to ramp back up slowly in Wellington that this week began the first of seven CDIs over the winter.

Results:

CDI-W World Cup Grand Prix