Christoff Conquers The Golden State Dressage Festival CDI

The Canadian rider earns her first CDI win in a big way with Pfalstaff.

Wendy Christoff cantered down the centerline into the big leagues at the Golden State Dressage Festival CDI in Rancho Murieta, Calif., on April 2-5.

Christoff, of Delta, B.C., Canada, earned her first CDI-level win in a big way, topping the CDI Grand Prix with a 64.55 percent on her 15-year-old Hanoverian gelding Pfalstaff.

Christoff rode in her first CDI last year. “I was so overwhelmed that I was going down the same centerline as Steffen [Peters] and Debbie [McDonald] and all of those people. I got in the ring and I completely froze,” she recalled.

“I forgot my test and went off course, so I didn’t do very well. It’s very, very overwhelming to go down that CDI centerline. I didn’t think I’d be so starstruck but I really was.”

At Golden State, she left those nerves behind and rode to the blue in the Grand Prix and to second place in the Grand Prix freestyle (66.25%). “The Grand Prix was fantastic!” exclaimed Christoff.

“Pfalstaff has a beautiful cadenced trot. If you keep him together he can just float over the ground. I didn’t ever feel him pulling against my hand or dumping on the forehand in the test. He just stayed with me and stayed up and strong and cadenced in the trot the whole time.”

The arena was watered and dragged before the class, and there was a shallow puddle between the arena fencing and the letter at C that the harrow didn’t reach. The puddle was reflecting the setting sun, and some horses were having a problem with the reflection.

“Right at the beginning of the test he looked at that and didn’t want to go down there,” said Christoff. “I thought ‘Oh, this could be bad.’ But then he came back to me and he was fine. I made a really stupid error in the one-tempis because I started counting them the way I usually do and then I changed the way I was counting them.

“I didn’t know if I had done 13 or 15, so I did two more, and of course it was 17. So I lost marks that were my own fault. I thought the piaffe got a bit weak, but that was my mistake by not riding him into it better from the passage. But the passage was good. So I can fix that and learn to do better.”

This is the beginning of the second season that Christoff is riding a Grand Prix freestyle. Karen Robinson of Applause Dressage put together the freestyle for her last year, and they made it relatively simple. It has 11⁄2 canter pirouettes and two-tempis on a bending line. Now Christoff feels more confident at the Grand Prix level, and she and Robinson are going to change the choreography and ramp up the difficulty.

“The trot tour felt like I had never felt him before,” said Christoff. “It was really, really fun. It was spooky in that arena, especially at night. He was so on the aids in the trot, and I think I relaxed a bit too much in the walk. When he was walking he saw something behind the flower pot at the letter M and then he wouldn’t canter up there. He is a bit of a fraidy cat. You always come out of there thinking, ‘I can fix that, I can do that better’ so I felt like there’s more there. But it was a great feeling and a good start for the season.”