Sabine Schut-Kery Preparing Olympic Silver Medal Mount Sanceo for World Championships Six Months Away Not to Compete at Wellington CDI5*
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By KENNETH J. BRADDICK
WELLINGTON, Florida, Feb. 14, 2022–A new Grand Prix Freestyle is being prepared by Sabine Schut-Kery for Sanceo ahead of the world championships in six months so as not to be caught out as she was when leading America to team silver at the Tokyo Olympics with a placing to earn a start among the top 18 combinations in the world.
Sabine who is in Wellington for the winter-long Global Dressage Festival with Sanceo and some younger horses she is developing, is carefully preparing for the world championships in Herning, Denmark Aug. 6-14 as she has throughout the competition career of the Hanoverian stallion now 16 years old.
U.S. qualifying requirements are way more difficult than most European nations–requiring three CDI scores to be selected for the squad of up to eight combinations to go to Europe for further events–such as the prestigious and highly competitive World Equestrian Festival in Aachen, Germany at the end of June and possibly Kronberg, also in Germany, a week later that will lead to selection of four rider and horse pairs for the team.
Her current plans, she told dressage-news.com, are to focus on qualifying scores that includes possibly one or two competitions in Wellington before returning to her new base in the San Diego area community of San Marco in California with the Desert Dressage CDI3* in Thermal as a likely event.
With her new Freestyle not yet ready and wanting to insure Sanceo is fit and fresh over the months leading to the world championships, she does not want to add stress to their training schedule so will not compete in the Global CDI5* at Palm Beach International Equestrian Center next week. The CDI5* will be the highlight of this year’s Florida circuit.
Adrienne Lyle and Salvino, her team mates in Tokyo, are based in Wellington and plan to compete in the 5* along with a lineup of international competitors.
For the first time in their career, Sabine and Sanceo are currently the top ranked American partnership on the world standings. They have not competed since the Olympics last July.
Her careful management has kept Sanceo at top sport–from the first international championship for the partnership at the World Young Horse Championships a decade ago and team gold at the Pan American Games five years later in 2015, then ending a campaign for a place on the team for the 2018 World Equestrian Games in Tryon because of concerns over the fitness of the horse.
The pair have competed only 44 times in their international career, including the three competitions at the Tokyo Games–Grand Prix, Special and Freestyle–placing third individually in the Special that decided the team medals and only the second silver for United States dressage in more than a century of the Olympics. The first was in 1948 following World War II when many nations were unable to participate.
