Day 1 Brings Surprising Dressage Results

Leslie Law started out on top in the advanced division of the Bit Of Britain/USEA American Eventing Championships today, Thursday, Sept. 10, but it wasn’t aboard his usual suspect.

Beatrice and Guy Rey-Herme’s usually-unbeatable Fleeceworks Mystere du Val played second fiddle today to his stablemate, Peter Green’s Evening Shade, who leads the top division on a mark of 27.5.

The first of four days of championship eventing action dawned bright and sunny at the Lamplight Equestrian Center in Wayne, Ill., which was a welcome contrast to last year’s event at the same venue.

Seven divisions of horses entered the arenas today, and most bloomed up in the electric early-fall atmosphere, which is also being augmented this year by an especially entertaining playlist of background music; horses were trotting and cantering to everything from carnivalesque versions of My Fair Lady tunes to Madonna classics to the grandly epic themes from Pirates Of The Caribbean and The West Wing.

Only six advanced horses are on hand to enjoy the weather and soundtrack, however. But the field includes some of the best-scoring dressage horses in the country, so it was no surprise when judge Wayne Quarles ranked the second- through fifth-placed horses within mere fractions of a point of each other.

As the first performance of the day, Law’s solid but expressive test aboard the lovely gray Zangershiede gelding Evening Shade set the standard for the class. The pair has a cushion of almost 5 points over second-placed riders Jennie Brannigan (Cooper) and Nate Chambers (Rolling Stone II), both of whom train with Phillip Dutton and Silva Martin and are tied on a 32.1.

Dutton himself is close on his students’ heels, having scored a 32.5 with Acorn Hill Farm’s Woodburn for fourth place. Law and Mystere du Val are just a hair behind in fifth (32.9), so time will be of the essence tomorrow.

Woodburn and Mystere du Val both performed solid, calm and correct tests, but Quarles scored Brannigan and Chambers’ mounts, who were slightly more tense but also more brilliant, ever-so-slightly higher.

Dutton, who will celebrate his 46th birthday on Sunday, also rode into the lead in the preliminary horse and training horse divisions aboard Nina Gardner’s Vidalia (28.3) and Annie Jones’ Young Man (26.8), respectively.

However, New York rider Kerry Torrey and Carlin Vickery’s Wellfleet tied with Dutton for first in the training horse division, so both riders will be watching their watches extra-carefully on cross-country tomorrow.

Intermediate Action

Local rider Jordynn Sahagian’s mount Nestor looked right at home in the dressage arena at Lamplight. The diminutive dark bay gelding powered straight to the top of the open intermediate standings, scoring a 30.0.