Dressage-News

WELLINGTON, Florida, Mar. 5, 2021–Olivia LaGoy-Weltz rode Lonoir to a personal best score to capture the Global Dressage Festival World Cup Grand Prix Friday to be one Freestyle performance away from the American partnership’s first world championship.

Olivia of Haymarket, Virginia and the 17-year-old Danish Warmblood gelding were awarded 75.739% that eclipsed the pair’s previous high mark of  74.580% set on the American gold medal team at the Nations Cup in Rotterdam in 2017.

Canada’s Jill Irving on Arthur placed second on 69.456% with Mette Rosencrantz of San Diego, California on Dzeko third on 68.696%.

The World Cup Grand Prix Freestyle is scheduled for Sunday at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center. The duo do not have to win to earn enough points to join Charlotte Jorst of Reno, Nevada on Kastel’s Nintendo to fill one of the two places reserved for North America at the Final on the calendar for Gothenburg, Sweden at the end of March.

However, Sweden joined several other European nations Friday in imposing a ban on horse shows until Mar. 28 as a result of the Equine Herpes Virus EHV-1 outbreak. Other Gothenburg Horse Show events that were to be part of the World Cup in the Scandinavium stadium but were parceled out to other nearby venues because of the year-long coronavirus pandemic have now been canceled.

Olivia, though, said: “It feels really awesome to get a personal best, especially when it feels like it was just another day in the office.” (short clip of Olivia and Lonoir)

Aside from what she described as “a little jig” in the extended walk that received marks of fours and fives from the judges, the score would have been higher as 77 of the total of 170 marks were eight or better, including two marks of nine.

“I feel like he really stayed with me today,” Olivia said. “Our goal for today was to just go in there and have a clean test, and it was almost clean, apart from a little jig in the walk, but I’m not too worried about that. For me, he gives a lot and my goal was to keep him back and more collected with more brilliance. That was the plan, and I feel like we executed that well. I feel like we have ridden that line for a while where I keep him quiet but there is less brilliance, or there is brilliance but then it’s hard to keep the consistency, so it’s just getting better and better.”

Coincidentally, Lonoir is owned by Olivia and Mary Anne McPhail who also owns the Palm Beach Dressage Derby that is this week’s Global event.

Results:

CDI-W World Cup Grand Prix