Given that she’d won all five of her qualifiers for the Reem Acra FEI Dressage World Cup Final, everyone in the sold-out stands in Leipzig, Germany, on freestyle night fully expected Adelinde Cornelissen to stand atop the podium at the end of the evening.

She’d won the Grand Prix test already with 80.95 percent, and her mount Jerich Parzival’s two biggest rivals, Moorlands Totilas and Mistral Hojris, weren’t in attendance. This year’s Final, held April 28-30, was hers for the taking.

But the Dutch superstar has learned not to take anything for granted. For many in the equestrian world, the name Cornelissen instantly conjures up memories of her individual medal bid at the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games (Ky.). Last September, she was eliminated from that competition early in her first test after her mount bit his tongue and began to bleed from the mouth.

But it was finally her turn in the spotlight on Saturday night in the Leipziger Messe. The points racked up as her 14-year-old Dutch Warmblood (Jazz—Fidora, Ulft) piaffed and passaged to jazzed-up versions of themes from The Nutcracker and Swan Lake. And when their score was confirmed at 84.80 percent, the German crowd admitted their appreciation for the often ill-fated Dutch pair with heavy applause.

“He was quite good. I’m very happy with him,” said Cor-nelissen with a huge smile. “The entire indoor season, I’ve had so much control, and he’s so relaxed, which means he’s more fluid and more at ease. That’s what I’ve been working for all the years before, and now finally I’ve got it.

“It’s a strange feeling I guess, that I don’t have to worry about the flowers and people that used to spook him,” she continued. “The fact is that he’s just started liking being in the ring. Before, he used to be scared and afraid of all the people. But now whenever we come in for the test, he just looks around and says, ‘My God, that’s cool!’ ”

Cornelissen’s score was almost 5 percentage points higher than that of runner-up Nathalie zu Sayn-Wittgenstein of Den-mark with Digby (80.03%). German rider Ulla Salzgeber finished third with Herzruf’s Erbe (78.82%).
Since her teammate Edward Gal’s mount Totilas was sold to Germany last year, Cornelissen and Parzival have become the Netherlands’ top pair, which is nice, but not altogether wonderful.

“I seriously do miss him!” Cornelissen said of Totilas. “If there’s somebody better than you [on your team], then it gets you to a much higher level.

I have to thank him, I guess, because he made me work harder and get better.”

It’s Not Revenge

Cornelissen started riding at the age of 6 and broke and trained several homebred ponies to national dressage champion-ship titles. She also competed in show jumping and eventing with her first horse, Innovation, who now enjoys a semi-retirement at her farm peppered with film and festival appearances.

At 31, Cornelissen speaks with a surprisingly American accent and tends to drop idioms such as “like” when her enthusiasm ramps up in press conferences. As the daughter of two teachers, her English skills were already above average as a child, so when it came time to pick a concentration in college, English seemed natural.
But studying the language turned out to be more tedious than expected, so Cornelissen was thrilled when she received an offer from Frank and Francine Gielis to ride and train at their Aaross Farm in Beachville, Ont. Working for a Dutch family but immersed in the English language, Cornelissen honed her speaking skills as well as her riding.

After her return to the Netherlands, she took a job teaching English at AOC Terra College in Meppel, but eventually an Olympic bid took shape, and it was apparent that she couldn’t prepare properly and still keep teachers’ hours. She gave up the job in March of 2008 to focus on her riding full time.
She and Parzival didn’t make the Olympic team for Hong Kong, but they earned the traveling reserve spot. Since then, they’ve been locked into the proverbial rollercoaster of international competition—plunging through the highs and lows every few months. Parzival sustained a tendon injury at the 2009 World Cup Final in Las Vegas, then came back to win team gold, gold in the Grand Prix Special and silver in the freestyle at the European Championships (England) that summer. Then came the WEG.

“Everybody keeps reminding me of that, and I’ve pretty much forgotten it,” Cornelissen said, showing the tiniest hint of annoyance. “Everyone thinks Kentucky was a big disappointment for me. Yes, it was disappointing, but it belongs to sport—the ups and downs. It’s not like I was really frustrated all year, and now I’m happy again. It’s not that.

“I never look back,” she explained. “It’s not as if it’s a revenge. This is where I am, and he’s doing very well in the moment, so I’m really happy with the victory!”

The Emperor In Her Stable

For Princess Nathalie, the niece of Den-mark’s Queen Margrethe II, royal titles are commonplace in daily life. But after placing second in both World Cup classes in Leipzig (76.88 percent in the Grand Prix and 80.03 percent in the freestyle), her horse Digby headed home to Scan-dinavia with a regal moniker of his own.

“He’s the emperor of my stable now!” the princess gushed. “I’m still pinching myself. I think I have a black and blue mark on my arm. My aim was to be in the top six, and that I ended up being second in both classes is beyond what I dreamed. I think I might realize it in a few weeks.”

Digby, a 14-year-old dark bay Danish Warmblood (Donnerhall—Oxenholm Pamina, Sandro), has been Nathalie’s partner for a decade.

“He was bred by my mother [Princess Benedikte], and there is a special bond between him and me,” she said. “I didn’t break him, but I started riding him when he was 4, and I’ve done all the work with him, working with Klaus Balkenhol and [British dressage trainer] Richard White.”

As a young horse, Digby was a thrill to train—very secure in his canter and able to do flying changes easily as a 4-year-old. By the next year, he could do the twos. But his trot wasn’t quite as impressive.

“But that got better, and suddenly I realized that maybe he could be not such a bad Grand Prix horse,” said Nathalie. “I didn’t imagine, though, that he’d be a horse scoring over 70 percent. If someone would have told me four years ago that this little horse would one day score a 76, I would have laughed.”

The pair represented Denmark at the WEG last year, just 10 weeks after Nathalie gave birth to her first child, a son named Konstantin Gustav Heinrich Richard, at the end of July. She continued to ride into the seventh month of her pregnancy and was back in the saddle just eight days after the baby was born. And at the WEG, she and Digby finished seventh in the freestyle on 78.75 percent.

“Digby has matured with age,” she said. “He’s always liked crowds, so I don’t have to worry about spooking. I can really concentrate on riding a nice, fluid test, which is a nice feeling.”

Leipzig’s spectators loved their freestyle test set to popular tunes from West Side Story like “Maria,” “America,” “Tonight” and “I Feel Pretty.” Their test opened with a piaffe and passage tour and included several piaffes and canter pirouettes directly in front of the judges at the ends of the ring.

“It was a good freestyle, but I think my Grand Prix test had a little bit more power,” Nathalie admitted. “It’s always a little bit of a worry when you ask for too much and get mistakes, and Richard did say, ‘Let’s go for a little bit of a safer ride without any mistakes.’ And that means maybe a little less expression. But over the winter he started offering a lot of expression in the trot, and now I can ask for it more and more in the ring. He really tries his heart out, and I’m really thankful for him.”

Rafalca’s Redemption

While none of the U.S. riders made it into the top placings, Jan Ebeling of Moorpark, Calif., led the contingent on Rafalca, placing 11th in the freestyle on 72.58 percent. He left the ring beaming after both his tests (the top 15 horses were allowed to perform their freestyles on Saturday, as no Grand Prix Special was offered).
Rafalca, a 14-year-old Oldenburg mare (Argentinius—Ratine, Rubenstein), is owned by Ebeling’s wife, Amy Ebeling, and Ann Romney. In addition to placing 11th in the freestyle, they finished 10th in the Grand Prix (68.20%).

Ebeling finished last in the Grand Prix at the 2009 FEI World Cup Final in Las Vegas after Rafalca flatly refused to go into the far end of the ring, so his performance in Leipzig was a big dose of redemption.
“I wanted to show everyone that my horse can actually do it and that she’s not a crazy horse!” he said with a laugh.

“Jan’s only problem was the first halt, where the mare was a little bit impressed with the environment. But from there on, she never put a foot wrong,” said Anne Gribbons, U.S. Equestrian Federation dressage technical advisor, after the Grand Prix. “She’s never been in this competitive of a field before, and she’s really showing that she’s going to a whole other level.

“She was steady as a rock and very businesslike. She’s lovely in the topline, and she can’t do enough to please Jan. She really tries,” Gribbons continued. “I liked what I saw of her last year, and when I went to California this winter to see them go, she had improved even beyond what I had anticipated. Jan rode much better, and they’re a real team now.”

Ebeling’s freestyle included one-tempi changes into a 11⁄2 pirouette, followed by two-tempis on a curve and one-tempis out of a 11⁄2 pirouette. Just before the final halt, he performed a piaffe fan, and he threw in some one-handed work in Leipzig as well.

“If you do these things, it’s taking a risk,” he said. “If it goes well, it’s great, but if you have one mistake, it’s really bad. Then the score depends on those one or two bad steps, not the 25 other steps. But the freestyle is fun for her, and she was awesome.”

Ebeling choreographed the test, and Karen Robinson helped produce the musical track. But it was Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the husband of Rafalca’s co-owner Ann, who picked out the songs, which are taken from the soundtrack of The Mission.

“Karen gave us a whole bunch of different things to listen to, and Mitt actually picked the music, and he did it right!” Ebeling said.

“Rafalca gave it all; I couldn’t ask for more,” continued Ebeling, who moved from Germany to the United States in 1984. “It’s just been amazing. In America we never get to ride in front of so many people, so for us, it’s quite something. It’s fantastic to represent your country at such a great event, and I’m thrilled to be getting these kind of scores in Europe with this company.”