Dressage at the 2006 World Equestrian Games - A Preview

Mon, 08/07/2006 - 00:00
2006 World Equestrian Games

An abundance of Dressage medals will be up for grabs at the 2006 FEI World Equestrian Games now that individual medals for both Grand Prix Special and Grand Prix Freestyle will be contested for the first time in a championship since the 1994 WEG in The Hague.

By the time definite entries are received by 15 August, the organisers expect up to 93 riders from up to 33 countries. Twenty countries have nominated teams with individual nominations from a further 13 countries. In order to compete in Aachen, riders and horse must have qualified by obtaining, as a combination, two scores of 64 per cent or over achieved at a three star CDI, FEI World Cup Dressage qualifier or CDIO (international team competition). These scores must have been awarded by an FEI official international judge from a nation other than the rider’s own.

For the majority of participants, the honour and responsibility of representing their country at world level will focus on six vital minutes in the arena for their FEI Grand Prix test. Five judges will take their places at different stations around the arena. Each judge awards a mark out of ten for each of the thirty-two set movements, plus four collective marks, each carrying a coefficient of two. When the marks are added, each rider’s score will be announced as a percentage. With a maximum of four riders per team, the scores from the highest placed three riders will be added, with the medals won by the teams with the highest total scores.

Once the team honours have been decided over the two-day Grand Prix test, the top thirty riders will go forward with a clean slate to the next set test, the Grand Prix Special, which includes the same movements but in a more difficult pattern and sequence. At this stage if all four members of a nation’s team are qualified, they may all take part. At the end of the Special, individual medals will be awarded. Then, lying ahead for the top fifteen riders remains the Freestyle to Music, where each rider, to their own choreography, performs a test to music of their choice. The top three riders will again win individual medals. No more than three riders per nation can take part, however, but the same winner could take all. “This will without doubt add excitement to the 2006 World Dressage Championship,” said FEI Dressage Committee Chairman Mariette Withages, referring to the new medal system.

Certainly around the reigning champion, local heroine Nadine Capellmann, there will be plenty of excitement generated, for this is her ‘home turf’. She won the CHIO Aachen this year with the stellar Elvis VA, as she did with the late lamented Farbenfroh before going on to win the World Title in Jerez in 2002. “It is a lifetime dream to be on a team in my home town,” Capellmann said, whose late father Kurt was president of Aachen show in the early nineties.

Her colleagues on the German team will be just as anxious to retain the gold on home ground for their country, as well as going for the individual honours. Heike Kemmer’s Bonaparte made a phenomenal come-back to win the German Championship at Munster. After the disappointment of last year’s FEI European Championship, where Bonaparte sustained an injury to his fetlock after the Grand Prix Special, Kemmer has taken it gently with the 13-year-old her father bought as a foal. Amazingly, this is Kemmer’s first World Championship call up.

Team-mate Klaus Husenbeth got his first German team ticket – and team gold - for the 2002 WEG. He won the German men’s championship with Piccolino at Munster and in May, both the CDI Grand Prix and Freestyle at Aachen.

Isabell Werth is no stranger to championships of any form and as the individual champion at the Rome 1998 WEG and the Special winner in The Hague 1994 with the great Gigolo FRH, as well as team gold on both occasions, no one could doubt she’ll be trying to bring a medal or two home with Warum Nicht, who although only ten, has already shown his big occasion mettle as runner up to Keltec Salinero at the 2006 FEI World Cup Final.

Holland’s Anky van Grunsven won her first championship ever when she took the Individual Freestyle title in front of her home crowd at the 1994 WEG in The Hague. What has happened since that landmark win with Bonfire demands its own history book, with more than a few chapters for Keltec Salinero, her partner in two FEI World Cup Dressage titles as well as being reigning Olympic and European champions. With team mates Imke Schellekens-Bartels on Sunrise, van Grunsven’s pupil Edward Gal on Lingh and Laurens van Lieren on Hexagon’s Ollright, van Grunsven and the Dutch team will be out to defeat their greatest rivals on German soil.

The USA team have made a formidable impression on the world dressage scene for some time. Team bronze medallists in 1994 and silver medallists at the 2002 WEG in Jerez, where team front runner Debbie McDonald narrowly missed an individual medal with Brentina, the US team, under the expert eye of team trainer Klaus Balkenhol (who himself won Team and Individual Freestyle medals in The Hague) will undoubtedly make a big impression. Brentina has only had one competitive outing this year, but her 76 per cent Grand Prix victory at CDN Elmlohe was certainly decisive. Guenter Seidel won the Grand Prix Special there on Dick and Jane Brown’s former show jumper Aragon, with other contenders for the team right on his heels. Steffen Peters will have a strong claim with Floriano and Leslie Morse, who is in training with Kyra Kyrklund in England, recorded a good second in the CDI grand prix at Hickstead recently. With eight possibles up for team places, the US is showing strength and depth.

Spain and Sweden made history at last year’s European Championships where the Spanish team magnanimously offered to share the bronze medal with Sweden. Both nations have won World medals; Spain the silver in Jerez and Sweden the bronze in Rome 1998. Beatriz Ferrer-Salat won Individual silver in Jerez on her wonderful Beauvalais, who although aged nineteen now, has shown nothing but winning form this year having swept the board at CDI Vierzon and CDI Saumur. Rafael Soto Andrade’s Invasor also carried seventeen years lightly to win ribbons in France on his first outings since the 2004 Athens Olympics, and Ignacio Rambla’s Distinguido has shown he is fully recovered from an eye operation undergone at the end of 2005.

Sweden’s front running pair, Jan Brink and Bjorsell’s Briar, endured a hiccup to their preparation when Briar bruised a rib on arrival at CDI Lingen, but the pair had already placed third at the 2006 FEI World Cup Dressage Final and fourth at CDIO Aachen. Counting the vastly experienced Louise Nathhorst and Guinness, Sweden has eight combinations to draw on for their team.

Denmark’s Andreas Helgstrand, who won the Danish Championship on Blue Hors Matine, is in the fortunate position of having two possible rides, either this stunning mare or the eye-catching stallion Don Schufro. He will have back up from the consistent Lone Joergensen and Hardhof’s Ludewig and is expected to be joined by rising star Joachim Thomsen (Mikado Engvang) and Princess Nathalie zu Sayn-Wittgenstein on her home-bred Digby.

For the first time since Stockholm 1990, Belgium has a team to send. Jeroen Devroe has been successful on Paganini and Carl Cuypers has forged a partnership with the former Sven Rothenberger mount Barclay II. Newcomer Francois Hologne and 2005 European team member Mieke Lunskens with Jade, who was on the 1990 team riding Abner, make up the foursome. Similarly Italy has the three ladies who took the medals at the Italian National Championships to form their first squad since WEG Rome in 1998.

British rider Wayne Channon’s luck looks to have turned with the Ferro stallion Lorenzo CH, whose injury kept the pair from this year’s FEI World Cup Final. They put in a good performance at CDIO Hickstead in preparation as did Sandy Phillips, who won the CDI Grand Prix with her mare Lara and Laura Bechtolsheimer with her parents’ Douglas Dorsey. The same weekend Emma Hindle was on winning form at CDI Fritzens with Lancet.

The four ladies representing Canada are already preparing in Europe as are the Australia contenders, with Mary Hanna deciding to base with long-term trainer Hubertus Schmidt, Germany’s reserve rider, and other possibles staying with team coach Ulla Salzgeber.

So much goes into the preparation, so many pieces have to come together; talent, training, dedication, financial backing and most of all fitness. Aside from winning medals, the importance of taking part cannot be underestimated. For Slovenia’s Igor Maver, the chance to compete his Lipizzaner stallion Favory Canissa XXII is a source of pride in itself. When Lipizzaner horses took part the 1990 World Games in Stockholm, it was on the Yugoslavian team. Since Slovenia gained independence in 1991, it will be the first time a representative has ridden at a World Championship. “It is a big success for the sport in Slovenia and for our stud in Lipica,” said Maver.

Kazakhstan has made a definite entry for Sergey Buikevich and his Akhal-Teke gelding Volan, who qualified with ease at their home CDI Almaty in June. While this will be the first trip abroad for the 43-year old rider and 12-year-old mount, they take part in this championship with the weight of history on their shoulders. The ancient breed is very much part of the growing interest in equestrian sports in this Central Asian country, the birthplace of Absent who partnered Russia’s Sergei Filatov to individual gold at the 1960 Rome Olympics and went on to father over sixty breeding stallions. Absent is remembered as a national hero in Kazakhstan. Their first representatives at an FEI World Championships will no doubt be considered so too.

Finland’s individual Kyra Kyrklund has been busy training riders from a host of nations in preparation for the FEI Word Equestrian Games, but her own progress on Max, the 11-year-old son of her former Grand Prix ride Master will be watched closely. After coming second overall at Aachen CDIO in May, the odds shortened on Kyrklund repeating her medal-winning performance in 1990 where she took the silver on the great Matador.

Well before the music strikes up for the Freestyle Final, spectators will have a taste of the drama and emotion that unfolds when horses and music come together. For the opening ceremony, music has been especially composed by Vic Kerkhof and Cees Slings, who brought a new dimension to freestyle music with their arrangements for Anky van Grunsven. The music will be performed by the Aachen symphony orchestra and conducted by Marcus Bosch. The highlight will be a quadrille of 64 horses from Germany’s State Studs. A special musical feature will be brought to you by the FEI World Equestrian Games press service.

After that, the Games will begin, with the Dressage taking place not in the Deutsche Bank stadium used for the CDIO, but the main stadium which can hold up to 40,000 spectators. The Games promise to be a real Dressage world feast.

Dressage World Champions (Individual) 
1966, Berne, Josef Neckermann / Mariano (FRG) 
1970, Aachen, Elena Petushkova / Pepel (URSS) 
1974, Copenhagen, Reiner Klimke / Mehmed (FRG) 
1978, Goodwood, Christine Stückelberger / Granat (SUI)
1982, Lausanne, Reiner Klimke / Ahlerich (FRG) 
1986, Cedar Valley, Anne-Grethe Jensen / Marzog (DEN) 
1990, WEG Stockholm, Nicole Uphoff / Rembrandt (FRG) 
1994, WEG The Hague Anky van Grunsven / Olympic Bonfire (NED) (Freestyle) 
1994, WEG The Hague Isabell Werth / Gigolo (GER) (Special) 
1998, WEG Rome, Isabell Werth / Gigolo (GER) 
2002, WEG Jerez de la Frontera, Nadine Capellmann / Farbenfroh (GER)

Dressage World Champions (Teams) 
1966 FRG 
1970 URSS 
1974 FRG 
1978 FRG 
1982 FRG 
1986 FRG 
1990 FRG 
1994 GER 
1998 GER 
2002 GER

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