“I’ve never needed to win so badly,” said Arlene “Tuny” Page after her first-placed Grand Prix CDI ride (70.50%) at the Phelpssports.com Palm Beach Dressage Derby with Wild One on March 3.
The last month has been tough for Page for personal reasons including a hospital stay for her husband Dave. “Thank God, he’s now doing great, but I haven’t felt like I’ve been in the groove,” she said. “I owe this win to Lars [Petersen, her coach], because I just haven’t been in it. He treated me really tenderly.”
Always a competitor, Page was able to put her emotions aside to ride an error-free and expressive Grand Prix test. “I was really happy with his piaffe-passage tour all around,” said Page. “It was even, and he was quiet. On a hot, hot day with humidity, we came down centerline, and he felt so easy and light. At X I only had to think that I wanted to piaffe, and it was like the Titanic going down stern first.”
Page’s closest competition came from Courtney King and Idocus (70.08%). They also put in a technically accurate test. King competed Idocus a year ago at the same CDI with mixed results as the newly reunited pair worked out the bugs, but today they put in a seamless performance.
Michael Barisone rode Neruda to third place (69.33%) with an impressive performance marred by a few mistakes in the tempi changes. Jane Hannigan took fourth place aboard Maksymilian (66.83%) over George Williams and Marnix (66.16%).
In the Intermediaire I, King came out on top again, but this time with Mythilus (74.25%), who placed second to his barnmate Rendezvous 2 in the Prix St. Georges yesterday.
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“I thought it was a very clean test,” said King of her ride on Mythilus. “I was happier than yesterday. He was much softer in the contact and more with me, but I still felt like it was a little bit strong. But it looks different than it feels. Sometimes when he’s really on that edge he looks fantastic.”
Carol Lavell placed second with Much Ado (73.25%) over Katherine Poulin-Neff on Brilliant Too (70.75%), Rendezvous (70.58%) and Lauren Sammis on Sagacious HF (70.33%).
A few mistakes kept Rendezvous from repeating her Prix St. Georges win. “Rendezvous felt magnificent,” said King. “She felt soft and true. I thought the extensions were great. One pirouette was a little bit big and the halts were not good. They weren’t square. In the halt to reinback she was a little parked out, and I went to fix her, but she was thinking backwards, and then I told her to go forwards, so we just had a miscommunication. I was really happy with the quality of her work.”
The top three in the Young Rider Prix St. Georges test remained unchanged from yesterday. Jocelyn Wiese and Lamborghini (69.20%) led the young riders again over Devon Kane aboard Douwe (67.500%) and Hannah Holland Shook on Cape Town (65.65%).
“My ride today was great,” said Wiese, a 19-year-old from Keene, N.H. “There were no mistakes, which I was really happy with. Everything felt really good. There was nothing I could complain about. It was better then yesterday—there were no mistakes in his changes, which was a good thing, and it felt a lot more together.”
