Lexington, KY -Over the weekend, the Stanley Park Fairgrounds in Estes Park, Colorado, played host to 25 of the top junior dressage riders for the 2013 USEF Dressage Seat Medal Finals. Held in conjunction with the Paragon Dressage CDI, the annual championship hosted elite equitation competition in 13 & Under and 14-18 age divisions. In the 13 & Under division, Alexander Dawson topped the field of 13 to claim championship honors, while in 14-18 competition Mickayla Frederick earned her first National Title. All entries rode in front of the expert panel of Janine Malone, Joan Darnell,and Jane Weatherwax.
 
13 & Under
 
Dawson (Sturtevant, WI) traveled to Estes Park in hopes of capturing a National Title with his own Kynynmount Shenanigans. The 13-year-old excelled throughout the rail work and pattern, which called for sitting trot, to score an impressive 88%.
 
“It’s been a long goal of mine and I’m really happy to be here. All the people here are super great and really good riders, so I’m really honored,” said Dawson of his experience over the weekend.
 
From the moment that he entered the ring on Saturday, everything played out perfectly for Dawson and the 10-year-old Connemara Cross pony.
 
“I felt that it went really good, he put his best effort forward and that’s all we really could.”
 
Earning Reserve Championship honors with a score of 82% were Mackenzie Perez (Fort Worth, TX) and Lori Mosites’ 13-year-old Trakehner mare Eli Sheva.
 
Third place honors went to Asia Ondaatje Rupert (Greenwich, CT) and Julie Burt’s 14-year-old Hanoverian mare Genuine Gem with a score of 77%.

In the 14-18 age group, Fredericks (Johnston, IA) scored a resounding victory after scoring 85% with Robert Susa’s and her own 10-year-old Hanoverian gelding Wrainer Q.
 
Vanessa Barnes (Atlanta, GA) cruised to Reserve Champion honors after scoring 79% with Beth Villery’s 20-year-old Holsteiner gelding Legende.
 
Earning third place honors were Sophie Nasrullah (Louisville, CO) and her own 11-year-old Oldenburg gelding Deveryk with a score of 78%.

USEF

Louise Parkes.
The excitement is building ahead of the JYSK FEI European Para-Dressage Championships at Herning in Denmark, where horses were presented at this afternoon’s first veterinary inspection. Just one horse was held over for re-inspection tomorrow – the bay mare Bo VB, competed by Vladimir Vinchon for France.
A total of 60 competitors from 19 nations will battle it out for the medals over the coming days, with the team action kicking off at 10.00 tomorrow (Wednesday).
Ones to Beat
The British continue to be the ones to beat in this sport that has enjoyed increased popularity and visibility in recent years, and particularly in the aftermath of last summer’s Paralympic Games on their home turf in London.  Today the British line-up was confirmed, with the hugely experienced Anne Dunham joined by triple Paralympic gold medallist Sophie Christensen, Natasha Baker and Sophie Wells. Ricky Balshaw will compete individually. 
Baker is unbeaten in Grade II for the last two years and is making her team debut.
Under their belt
At the FEI European Para-Dressage Championships 2011 in Moorsele (BEL), the British already had the team and three individual titles under their belt before adding four more on the final afternoon. The question this time around is whether the other countries that put pressure on them at the Paralympic Games in London last summer will continue to gain ground.  Germany, Dutch and Danish riders upped their game while the Irish pulled a major surprise taking home team bronze at their first Paralympics.
Horse inspections for all three disciplines taking place in Herning are conducted in exactly the same way, with passports handed over to officials who then check each animal’s micro-chip before the horse is walked and then trotted before the Ground Jury.
Stinna Tange Kaastrup, who secured Freestyle Grade Ib gold and Individual Grade Ib silver in Moorsele, carries the high hopes of Danish supporters as the JYSK FEI European Para-Dressage Championships get underway.  
Facts and Figures:
This is the first time for Para-Dressage to take place alongside other disciplines at the FEI European Championships.
Competitors from 19 nations will participate.
11 countries have entered teams: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway and Russia.
7 nations will be represented by individual riders: Belarus, Finland, Israel, Latvia, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia.
Great Britain topped the medal table with eight golds at the last FEI Para-Dressage Championships staged in Moorsele, Belgium in 2011.

Photo: FEI/Kit Houghton.

DressageMeetingOnline.com the new Educational website for dressage presenting LIVE webinars by the world’s top international dressage trainers has revolutionized dressage education around the world with the latest Webinar presented by international U.S. rider Steffen Peters.  Peters broadcasted a live webinar this past Saturday with great success drawing in particpants from over 12 countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Belgium, France, Sweden and Germany.

Editor in Chief of WorldDressageNews.com Gail Herrell was invited to attend the webinar “I was quite surprized to have seen people from such a variety of countries participating in the live webinar of Steffen Peters.  Steffen was very clear with his descriptions on the subject of the day which was The Warm Up.  He showed various video clips of horses warming up and during the time the videos were playing, he was explaining his observations and points of view about the subject.  People were asking question and Steffen was very thorough with his answers.  The webinar lasted for one hour and 10 minutes and the participants wanted more.  Overall, as a dressage rider myself, I found this session to be extremely useful and educational for me and from what I gathered of the other participant, they too were very excited with this webinar.”

Other webinars presented by DressageMeetingOnline.com were of Christoph Hess who presented Part 1 of his 3 part series on The Training Scale.  International trainers Volker Brommann and Arthur Kottas also presented webinars in the recent past with great success.

Andreas Stano, Executive Director of DressageMeetingOnline.com said “We are off to a great start in raising the bar for dressage education.  This is an additive to DressageClinic.com who provides video education. We have had great response for our first webinars.  The interest and beneficial advantages participants obtain from attending these live webinars are without question beneficial to the development of any series dressage rider.  When we say these webinars are up close and personal, we mean it.”

The United States Dressage Federation will be announcing this week the approval of DressageMeetingOnline.com as a valuable educational resource and have accepted the program into their accreditation program for the USDF University Program.

European-herning / HorsUs.

Danish National dressage coach Rudolf Zeilinger keeps a positive outlook on the Danish team medal chances. All horses work really well and now it is of the utmost importance that their shape reach its peak during the days of the European championships.

‘All the dressage horses are fit, they look good and they have trained really well on our pre-camp’, explains Rudolf Zeilinger. The Danish team horses have arrived sound and well to Herning and have settled into the stables. ‘It is our task to make the timing of the training perfect for each horse up to their first start in order for the horses to peak in performance this week’. Rudolf Zeilinger believes in his team, Denmark has a chance for to take a medal on home soil. He has the same favourites for team medals as many of the other riders, team coaches and judges we have talked with. Rudolf Zeilinger sees four nations in the battle for the three medals: Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark in random order. ‘The four teams are very strong and I anticipate a very hard and tight battle for the medals’, concludes Zeilinger.

On the Danish team, four horsemen, all of whom can score high in the Grand Prix class, favour him.  What the team might lack is an outstanding top scorer like Helen Langehanenberg and Damon Hill for Germany for example, or Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro for the British team. The Netherlands have two Dutch top scorers in Edward Gal / Glock’s Undercover and Adelinde Cornelissen / Jerich Parzival. None of the Danish horses have trouble going in different arenas, except perhaps, Andreas Helgstrand’s Akeem Foldager who were scared witless during ten minutes on the course in Aachen, where he spotted the heads of some people walking behind a hedge. Normally, Akeem is not easily scared, but in Aachen he reacted violently.- ‘We are actually to blame a little, because we did not take his reaction from the first day seriously enough, now we know he can react like that and then we can and will take our precautions with the training in Herning. I estimate that we will not experience the problem again,’ explains Zeilinger.

Lexington, KY-Over the weekend, the Stanley Park Fairgrounds in Estes Park, Colorado, played host to 25 of the top junior …

This year’s Fall Symposium will feature popular clinician Christoph Hess from Germany.  Christoph first came to New England for the 2009 NEDA Spring Symposium.  While at the time a relatively unknown name in the U.S., Christoph’s credentials and easy-going manner soon made him a household name. Hess is an FEI 4* Judge and heads the department of education at the German National Federation (DOKR).  He’s been a featured writer for Dressage Today and was a panelist of the 2013 Global Forum, N.A. this past winter in Florida.

Due to a busy fall competition calendar and the addition of the USDF National Dressage Championships scheduled for the first week of November, this year’s Fall Symposium was moved to the last weekend in September.  Cost to attend the 2-day symposium for NEDA members is $68/day or $110 for both days if you register by September 10th.  After September 10th, cost is $75/day or $135 for both days.  Lunch will be available if pre-ordered.  Non-member prices are $80/Day or $160 for both days and after September 10th prices are $95/day and $190 for both days.

Riders for this symposium have been chosen by Mr. Hess.  The rider list will be published on the NEDA website before the end of August. The format of the symposium may include discussion of theory with a Power Point presentation, live rides with discussion and presentation of training methods, and test riding with commentary on quality (performance of horse and rider) and execution (actual riding of the test). Watch the NEDA website, bulletin board and Facebook page for ongoing announcements and details.

Special room rates are available at the Comfort Inn, South Portland, Maine (207-775-0409) and at the Freeport Comfort Suites (207-865-9300).  Please ask for the NEDA rate and book by August 25, 2013 to ensure rate.  There are also many additional hotels and motels in the Portland, Freeport, and Lewiston/Auburn area.

If you’re interested in volunteering, please contact Marie DiBiccari, mdibiccari@aol.com. .

Auditor questions should be directed to Elizabeth Creamer, ecreamer@pinelandfarms.org, 207-657-6419.

All other questions, including rider questions, can be directed to Jennifer Dillon at 508-641-3121 or fallsym@neda.org (please put NEDA Fall Symposium in the subject line).

NO REFUNDS WILL BE ISSUED AFTER SEPTEMBER 10, 2013.  Parking will be available at The Equestrian Center; use the Pineland Farms website for directions (www.pinelandfarms.org).  There are limited choices for lunch away from the Pineland Farms campus, so it’s recommended you bring your own lunch or pre-purchase sandwiches with your registration.

Pineland Farms Equestrian Center offers a heated indoor arena capable of holding a full size dressage arena and seating for 1,000+ auditors. It’s a mere 2 hours from Boston, just 60 miles from the Portsmouth, NH area, and no more than 30 minutes north of Portland, Maine. They will have plenty of on-site parking for most (if not all) auditors, sponsors, and riders.

There will be a large, heated vendor area for shopping and gathering during the catered lunch. On-site , group housing is available for sponsors, vendors, auditors, and volunteers, and there will be a group rate at hotels in Portland, Freeport, and Lewiston/Auburn.

Communication regarding receipt of your registration will be done via email so please provide a valid email address.  If you do not use email, please don’t give an address; we’ll contact you by phone instead. TICKETS WILL NOT BE MAILED IN ADVANCE.  All auditors will pick up their auditor packet, using their first & last name, on the first day of their attendance.  If you are registering for a group of people, please complete a separate form for each person as packets will be distributed to individuals only.

Lunch ~ $12 each sandwich, each day.

All sandwich choices will be served with bottled water and will feature Boar’s Head meats, Pineland Farms cheeses and locally grown produce and breads.

Garden Wrap (avacado, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, red onion, Monterey Jack cheese, hummus)

BLT (lettuce, tomato, Applewood smoked bacon with mayo on white bread)

Turkey Salad (turkey with mayo, celery, onion, cranberries, walnuts, splash of OJ, lettuce on wheat)

Classic Tuna (Albacore tuna with mayo, celery, carrot, dash of lemon juice with lettuce on wheat)

Cup of soup ~ $3.50 each soup each day.

Soups are made on-site daily at The Market

Saturday: Chicken Pot Pie or Fish Chowder

Sunday: Chicken Noodle or Loaded Baked Potato

Louise Parkes.
Eva Moller and Sa Coeur became one of an elite group of double champions when adding the Six-Year-Old title to last year’s victory in the Five-Year-Old category at the 2013 FEI World Breeding Dressage Championships for Young Horses in Verden, Germany today.  And it was Lena Stegmann and Scara Boa who topped yesterday’s Five-Year-Old division when earning an overall score of 9.6 including a perfect 10 for submissiveness.  These Championships were marked by the determination of the judges to reward good training, good riding and the cooperation and obedience of the horses.

“It was more or less a perfectly organised Championships, providing the best possible conditions for young horses to show themselves in the best way.  It wasn’t  necessarily the most spectacular horses who came out on top, it was well-trained horses with good basic gaits and submissiveness who were the medal winners” explained FEI Director of Dressage, Trond Asmyr.

Together, FEI and WBFSH have organized the World Breeding Championships for Sport Horses (WBCSH) in Dressage, Jumping, and Eventing since 1992, and this year the Dressage Championships attracted a field of 84 talented young horses from 21 countries.  Almost 42 percent of the entries were German-born, with 15 competing for the nation of their birth and 20 competing for other countries.

Five-year-old Championship

The chestnut Hanoverian mare Scara Boa (by Scolari x Wolkenstein ll) produced a lovely test to win the Five-Year-Old Final in which Andreas Helgstrand slotted into silver medal spot with the Oldenburg stallion Floricello 2 (Florencio 1 x Dormello) and Emmelie Scholtens took the bronze with the KWPN stallion Dorado (Krack C x Rousseau).

The judges for the this Final were led by The Netherlands’ Ghislain Fouarge and included Jacques van Daele (BEL), Linda Zang (USA) and Sandy Phillips (GBR). They awarded the winning marks to the mare bred by Rixtra Stolter and owned by Ingo Pape from Hemmoor in Germany.  Lena Stegemann has been riding Scara Boa for less than a year, and the 30-year-old German rider achieved 9.5 for trot, 9.0 for canter, 9.7 for walk, a full 10 for submissiveness along with 9.8 for general impression.  Stegemann admitted to being suprised by her wonderful result – “we were already happy when it became evident that we qualified for the Championships – I would never have imagined to win!” she said.

The liver-chestnut Floricello, bred by Germany’s George Siverding, earned a score of 8.72, having been awarded 9.8 for his wonderfully expressive trot, 8.0 for walk, 8.8 for canter, 8.0 for submissiveness and 9.0 for general impression. Danish rider Helgestrand took the stallion to the Swedish fixture at Falsterbo this summer in preparation for these Championships, and the experience gained on that trip paid off handsomely when they clinched the silver.

Dutch rider, Emelie Scholtens, admitted that her hopes for success had been invested in her other ride, Desperado, who however didn’t perform as well as expected when finishing seventh on a score of 8.32.  Instead it was the chestnut stallion Dorado who rose to the occasion, receiving scores of 9.6 for trot, 8.0 for walk, 9.0 for canter, 7.9 for submissiveness and 9.0 for general impression to take bronze on a final tally of 8.70.

Six-Year-Old Championship

Eva Moller was under plenty of pressure following her victory with Sa Coeur (Sir Donnerhall x Don Davidoff) at last year’s Championships.  Moller is a busy lady at any time as a mother of four children and with a very successful career as a producer of top-quality young dressage horses at the world-famous Kasselmann Stables where she has been working for the last 15 years.

The Oldenburg Sa Coeur was bred by Gestut Lewitz and originally owned by Hof Kasselmann but sold at last year’s PSI auction for a staggering €2.3m.  The gelding’s new Russian owner returned Sa Coeur to Moller so that he would contest the World Championships once again as a six-year-old, and the faith shown in his rider was well-rewarded today.

With scores of 9.2 for trot, 9.2 for walk, 8.9 for canter, 8.7 for submissiveness and 9.2 for general impression, the overall mark of 9.04 left the pair clear winners.  They pinned reigning Reem Acra FEI World Cup™ Dressage champion Helen Langehanenberg and the Westfalian mare Damons Delorange (Damon Hill x Rubin Royal) into silver medal position while the Oldenburg gelding Discovery (Dimaggio x Classiker) took the bronze.

The judges for the Six-Year-Old Final were Isabelle Judet (FRA), Annette Fransen-Jacobaeus (SWE), Kurt Christensen (DEN) and Dr Dietrich Plewa (GER), and they awarded the silver-medal-winning partnership with 8.2 for trot, 9.4 for walk, 9.2 for canter, 9.0 for submissiveness and 8.8 for general impression which rounded Langehanenberg’s score with Damon’s Delorange to 8.92.

Heiner Schiergen steered Discovery into bronze medal position having racked up 8.7 for trot, 8.9 for walk, 9.0 for canter, 8.6 for submissiveness and 8.8 for general impression which brought their total to 8.80.

Winning rider Moller admitted that her horse’s history piled extra pressure on them both, but now that Sa Coeur has done what they both set out to do in recording the significant double of wins over two consecutive Championships she has high hopes.  “His future plan is that he stays with me to train as far as we can go together, and then – well, who knows!” she said this afternoon.

Results:

Five-year-old Championship: GOLD - Scara Boa (Lena Stegemann) 9.6; SILVER - Floricello (Andreas Helgstrand) 8.72; BRONZE – Dorado (Emmelie Scholtens) 8.70.

Six-year-old Championship: GOLD - Sa Coeur (Eva Moller) 9.04; SILVER - Damon’s Delorange (Helen Langehanenberg) 8.92; BRONZE – Discovery (Heiner Schlergen) 8.80.

Eva Moller and Sa Coeur became one of an elite group of double champions when adding the Six-Year-Old title to last year’s victory in the Five-Year-Old category at the FEI World Breeding Dressage Championships for Young Horses 2013 in Verden, Germany today. Photo: FEI/Karl-Heinz Frieler.