Dressage-News

WELLINGTON, Florida, Jan. 11, 2024–Pan American Games team gold medal partnership of Anna Marek and Fire Fly on Thursday captured the Global Dressage Festival’s first international Grand Prix of the winter-long circuit to bolster her prospects of selection for competition in Europe to seek a spot on America’s Olympic squad.

Anna of the Ocala area community of Dunnellon and the 14-year-old KWPN gelding were awarded 70.652% for the victory and the rainy and unseasonably cold weather to kick off a quarter century as America’s major international competition center.

Great Britain’s Susan Pape on the 10-year-old Oldenburg stallion Harmony’s V-Plus was runner-up on 68.196% with Germany’s Christoph Koschel on Eddieni, a 15-year-old KWPN gelding, third on 68.109%.

Anna and Fire Fly, ranked third on the U.S. Olympic standings, said she was competing to maintain the momentum begun with success at the Pan Ams last September and to improve on the pair’s performances in Chile.

“I have the horse and we’re becoming just more and more of a partnership,” said Anna, the mother of two young children who is also kept busy with a substantial training operation near Ocala’s World Equestrian Center.

. It seems like with each show, he had already shown Grand Prix before I started riding him, but it took us a long time to learn each other’s buttons. He’s a really sensitive horse, but it feels like, I said to my coach, Ann Gribbins, she’s worked with us all along the way and I said it just feels like more and more I can go in there and I can just relax and trust that you know he’s going to do do what I

“We both did great. And what was awesome is that, you know, at home I have such a busy life. I have two toddlers. I have a business. I have my husband and I have a farm.,” she explained. “Like, it’s craziness all the time. So going to Chile, I was able to have better time with Fire Fly–I only had one horse to ride twice a day, every day. It really taught me a lot.