Lars Petersen stepped into the ring at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival in Wellington, Fla., on a brand new (and very flashy) mount: the 9-year-old Oldenburg mare, Elfenfeuer.
Previously campaigned by her owner, Alice Tarjan, Elfenfeuer is now listed as owned by Tarjan and Petersen, making it possible for the U.S.-based Petersen to represent his home country of Denmark in international competitions.
Petersen responded in the affirmative when asked if the plan was to try and qualify with Elfenfeuer for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
“We have to ride first and see; we ride one show at a time,” Petersen said.
Tarjan has been going to Petersen for guidance from the ground with Elfenfeuer for the past four years, but Petersen didn’t swing a leg over the mare until December of 2015.
“I asked Lars to get on her and play around and see if he could get the horse a little bit stronger, so it doesn’t take so much power in me, that will help her along, so we’re just kind of playing along,” Tarjan said. “We’ll see what happens.”
Petersen and Elfenfeuer competed together for the first time on Jan. 27 in the CDI Grand Prix, and though Petersen was eliminated for blood on the side, Tarjan is pleased with how the partnership is developing.
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“I bought that horse as a 4-year-old, and I did all the training myself. I’m the only person whose ever been on her, so I think to get on somebody else’s horse and try to figure out what the language is that I taught her is not so easy,” said Tarjan, who is a cancer survivor.
You can read more about her journey in One To Watch: Alice Tarjan Takes Each Day As It Comes With Elfenfeuer.
“He’s very compassionate, he has a lot of sympathy for her and trying to figure out how she understands things, rather than force her into how he knows how to ride a horse,” Tarjan continued.
Tarjan competed Elfenfeuer at the Grand Prix level in 2015 but didn’t find the success she was hoping for.
“She’s a really good horse, and you can’t fault her. She’s young, and she’s come along very quickly, and I just felt like every time we went in the ring, I was always disappointed with how it was never what I could get at home,” Tarjan said. “She would lose the balance downhill, we would keep crashing, and I couldn’t keep the uphill balance.
“I used to foxhunt, and it occurred to me that you’d go out fox hunting and see different horses and say ‘Oh that’s a lady’s horse,’ or ‘That’s a gentleman’s horse,’ ” Tarjan continued. “And I thought OK, maybe ‘Fury’ is a man’s horse. She just needs somebody who is a little stronger to help her, so Lars has been great.”
The last time Petersen competed at the Olympics was the 1996 Games in Atlanta aboard the horse Uffe Korshojgaard. He competed Mariett at the 2014 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in France for Denmark.
