In the seven-year history of the Kampmann Dressage Cup Final, Isabell Werth had never won. But on Feb. 24, in Bremen, Germany, she changed all that, taking the top score in both the Grand Prix and the Grand Prix Special aboard Warum Nicht FRH.
Scoring 77.84 percent in the Special, the rider from Rheinberg, Germany, continued her series of victories from the World Cup show at Neumünster, Germany, the weekend before and also won Bremen’s Grand Prix on Friday afternoon.
During the Special, the 2006 Grand Prix Special World Champion had been scoring an average of 80 percent, but her huge Hanoverian chestnut gelding shied—as a lot of horses before him—in the canter tour, when he came over the diagonal directly towards the TV cameras.
Werth lost points for the mistake and unintentional flying change but stayed very calm and got Warum Nicht, or “Hannes” relaxed into the two-tempi changes.
Werth and Hannes scored consistent 8s and 9s in the Special test. “I am super satisfied with Hannes. He was fantastic besides this brief moment when he was shying because of the cameras. It is always great to win,” she said.
The first four years of this distinguished class saw Ulla Salzgeber and Rusty win, followed by Martin Schaudt and Weltall in 2005 and by Heike Kemmer and Bonaparte in 2006. In eight indoor and outdoor shows in 2006 and beginning of 2007, a total of 27 combinations qualified for the final at Bremen.
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The Danish 2006 World Championship individual silver and bronze medalist Andreas Helgstrand could not come to Bremen because of the extremely heavy snow storm, which had closed the Danish highways.
Jan Brink, of course, preferred to compete at Gothenburg, Sweden, where he won the World Cup qualifier. Anky van Grunsven just gave birth to a daughter and is not competing at the moment, and Ann Kathrin Linsenhoff had to renounce her participation because she was ill.
The strongest competition Werth and Hannes faced were their 2006 WEG gold-medal teammates Nadine Capellmann and Elvis VA. Capellmann and Elvis showed an excellent Grand Prix test, not only scoring top marks in the extended walk, trot and canter, but also presenting very well-done passage tours, piaffes and transitions between the two movements.
With a score of 77.29 percent, Capellmann and her 11-year-old Hanoverian gelding laid down quite a challenge for Werth, but she withstood the pressure and took victory with 77.91 percent in the Grand Prix.
In the Grand Prix Special, the starting order was the reverse of the Grand Prix results, so Capellmann and Elvis had to go second-to-last into the arena. Elvis started cantering in the trot half-pass to the right, got his tongue over the bit, and shook his head in the extended trot. Capellmann got him back in line, but a top placing was not to be. With 65.60 percent the German combination achieved only a disappointing 10th place.
Therefore the door was open for Silvia Iklé and Salieri CH (73.44%) to become runners-up ahead of Ellen Schulten-Baumer and Donatha S (72.00%). Salieri CH was brilliant again in the piaffe-passage tour but had a loss in rhythm in the collected walk and a mistake in the beginning of the one-tempi flying changes. For the final piaffe on the center line, the 13-year-old Swiss-bred dark brown gelding received five 9s for the passage, and for the transitions between passage and piaffe on the center line, he scored 8s and 9s.
