Dressage-News

WELLINGTON, Florida, Feb 24, 2022–Carrie Schopf, the only international dressage rider for the former Soviet state of Armenia, on Thursday won the Global Dressage Festival CDI3* Grand Prix for the Special, the first Big Tour victory in the career of the 64-year-old rider. The 64-year-old rider is the only Armenian known to have ever competed in international dressage.

Carrie, who lives in Bremen, Germany but was an American by birth and has competed on the Wellington winter circuit for the past seven years, received a personal best score of 69.087% on the 14-year-old Oldenburg gelding. The score was the second to fulfill requirements to compete at the world championships in Herning, Denmark in August. The pair rode at the 2019 European Championships.

While riding as an amateur, Carrie and Saumur won an Intermediate II at Wellington exactly four years ago to the day.

Codi Harrison of Wellington on Katholt’s Bossco placed second on 67.652% with Jessica Howington of Ocala, Florida on Cavalia was third on 67.261%.

Carrie, who with her husband, Bernd, keeps her horses at home, was born in the United States to her parents who had fled Armenia to escape genocide. She moved to Germany and while living there sought Armenian citizenship and began riding for the nation of fewer than three million people in 2018.

“I’m very pleased with my horse,” said the rider who teaches herself, “because I’ve just made my goal to try to reach him somehow in the show ring. You can see how much energy he has. And sometimes he just makes himself very tense, because he wants to do more than maybe I want him to do.

“So my goal was just to have a test that flowed, and where he felt comfortable and wanted to do his job. And whatever the result was, was the result, but my goal was just simply to be a team with him; to come together with him and be a team.”

Results:

CDI3* Grand Prix for Special