PrintOur columnist reflects on the first half of 2010 and the many challenges and accomplishments the dressage community has seen.
The world of High Performance dressage has indeed had quite a dynamic year so far!
Let’s start with Moorlands Totilas, who has become the international sensation with rider Edward Gal. Records have been shattered with inconceivable high scores, and the stallion captured his first FEI World Cup Dressage Final in his first attempt. And as we witnessed at the 2009 European Dressage Championships, this amazing creature continues to bring a few other top horses into high-score territory along with him.
In the United States, we’ve had our own sensation in Ravel and Steffen Peters. Following his 2009 FEI World Cup Dressage Final win in Las Vegas, Ravel went on to an unprecedented victory at the Aachen CHIO in Germany. I think the world would agree Steffen is maturing into a phenomenal rider, and together this pair just keeps getting better.
Another highlight for United States dressage was the Palm Beach Exquis World Dressage Masters CDI***** (Feb. 19, p. 74). In its second year, the series brought top European riders to Florida, giving U.S. audiences a chance to see these horses and riders compete live.
More importantly, the competition gave our riders a chance to compete on U.S. soil against some of the world’s best. As a country, we need to find more ways to attract the Europeans. Competing on a regular basis against the best is an effective and necessary step to get to the top. When you’re in that environment you cannot allow yourself to become complacent—you must constantly hone your skills to achieve new levels of performance.
Since it’s difficult to attract the European riders here even occasionally, much less regularly, our riders have no choice but to travel there. Obviously, this is an expensive undertaking.
Fortunately, we have some dedicated sponsors who help our riders, but it’s not enough and they cannot be expected to carry that burden single-handedly. Even if it were possible, it would simply be unfair to expect them to do so.
We have many top riders on top horses that can’t do it alone and need assistance. The U.S. Equestrian Federation is able to help some, but not all, who qualify for grants and too frequently with not enough money.
This country needs to reach the point where we can send our top dressage horses to Europe as we do the show jumpers. We have to go in great enough numbers and to enough shows so that we become a force to be reckoned with.
I believe partly because of the success of the jumpers, we’re seeing more foreign riders at the Florida shows. This situation benefits us in so many ways. Not only, as I mentioned, do our riders perfect their techniques competing against top riders from all over the world, it also exposes our young riders to a higher quality of riding.
The trickle-down effect improves all levels and creates a greater number of top-notch riders, allowing all of us greater access to this type of knowledge and experience.
Exposing the audience to a higher level of riding will also allow new levels of understanding and ability to discern quality riding, thus creating a demand for it within our own national ranks.
Difficult Issues
