It was an unusual Rolex Kentucky event this year, where nine of the horses in the top 10 after dressage remained in the top 10 at the end of the competition. If you didn’t have a good dressage test, you weren’t going to be competitive.
“It was a very high quality field. Dressage has risen to a new level in eventing,” said Marilyn Payne, who judged at M. “The basics are very correct. The horses are correctly trained. The riders put a lot of time into the dressage.”
The U.S. riders struggled in a field of more international competitors than ever. Only two U.S. riders made it into the top 10 after dressage, although Buck Davidson placed an impressive third with My Boy Bobby.
“I think Buck really rode My Boy Bobby well,” said Payne. “He rode him really from behind and got the engine going. It was a very powerful test. At this point the horse still gets a little bit tense at times and short in his neck, but he can even do better.
“He has very good gaits. He has a very expressive canter and expressive changes,” she added. “He could easily win the dressage once he gets it all together. You don’t realize what the level of competition is until you get horses from all over the world, and then you realize we’ve got to raise the bar, and we did.”
Although Lucinda Fredericks placed second in dressage behind Bettina Hoy and Ringwood Cockatoo, her expressive test with Headley Britannia impressed the judges.
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“I first judged her at Burghley [England] a couple of years ago. I didn’t know who she was at all. When she trotted in front of me, I thought, ‘How can this be a four-star horse? There’s no way!’ She’s got this short little trot,” recalled Payne. “I have to hand it to Lucinda. With very correct dressage training, she’s done what the ideal is, which is to improve your horse’s gaits through dressage. You would never dream that it was the same horse coming into the ring in dressage that you see in the horse inspection.
“The horse answers her, rises to the occasion and tries her heart out,” added Payne. “They’re a great partnership. [Headley Britannia’s] not being made to do this. They both put out 150 percent.”
Rolex Kentucky also marked the first time the new FEI four-star test has been used, and Payne was pleased with how horses and riders handled it.
“I rode it a couple of times because we’d never judged it before. So I rode it on a couple of fourth level/FEI dressage horses. It flowed well, and it felt pretty good,” she said. “But for an event horse, it’s a challenge. They’ve never mixed up the counter-canter and flying changes before throughout the test. It used to be that once you did a change, you never went back to counter-canter. That’s very difficult for the horses.
“I was pleasantly surprised how well everyone did that. Some horses got uptight and might have switched leads in the counter-canter, and a few might have missed the changes, but overall I thought it was excellent,” she said.
