Birthday Girl Wins with 90% – Germany take the Eventing Title and USA win the Aachen Grand Prix

Aachen first opened its doors in 1924 and has held annual equestrian competitions every year since, except between 1940 to 1946 – the duration of the second world war, and 2006, when in the autumn, it was the venue for The World equestrian Games. In 1929, Aachen was the venue of the first ever  Equestrian show jumping Nations Cup, a competition still held today and has continued to thrive here. From here, the Nations Cup series has become a world wide phenomenon with competition held in several different countries as a series, with a final held in a different venue/country each year. In 2013, the FEI added an annual dressage Nations Cup series to its schedule.

In this article we look at the results of the teams in the Eventing for the SAP Cup and the dressage teams in the second part of the Lambertz Family Cup. As Great Britain did not send a team for the show jumping, we comment on the Grand Prix of Aachen sponsored by Rolex.

The Eventing Nations cup sponsored by SAP

The eventing competition had eight teams from countries around the globe. In the first faze, the dressage was performed by the riders to a very high standard with riders getting low penalties to carry through for the rest of the event. The top twenty two combinations all progressed with less than 30 penalties with Ingrid Klimke from Germany in the lead with 20.70. Second was Michael Jung with 21.50, both from Germany and third was Laura Collett from Great Britain with 22.90. At the end of the dressage faze, Germany were in the lead with Great Britain in second, (only 3 penalties behind and New Zealand in third).

In the Jumping faze Laura Collett from GBR got a clear round and she went to the top of the leader board. Both Ingrid Klimke and Michael Jung collected 4 penalties with the dropping of one pole each. There were another 13 clears in the show jumping out of the 43 starters. In the team standings, Germany remained in pole position with Great Britain dropping a place to third with New Zealand in second. The cross country faze would be exciting as there were only 7.2 penalties between the top three.

The cross country faze saw Imogen Murray riding Ivar Gooden going early and rode a great round collecting only 3.60 time penalties. She remained top of the individual leader board out of the 41 starters for cross country for another two and half hours when the big guns appeared.

Christopher Burton of Australia got round with no penalties to add to his score as did Michael Jung, both riding as an individuals only. On their team rides Christopher collected 4.00 and Michael collected 5.20 time penalties. Ingrid Klimke rode another perfect round on SAP Hale Bob finishing with no extra penalties to add. The last to go was Great Britain’s Laura Collett, in the lead before this faze riding London 52. Unfortunately, she had a run out and ended with 30 penalties. Both Piggy French and Andrew Hoy only collected 1 time penalty as they were just outside the 6 minutes 55 seconds allowed. There were four eliminations and three who retired. When all the penalties were added together from each team, with the worst score from each being dropped, the result was the winning team Germany with Ingrid Klimke, Michael Jung, Andreas Dibowski and Josefa Sommer, who was one

of the retirees cross country, with a total of 94.30 penalties. In second was the team from New Zealand with Dan Joyclyn, whose score was discounted, Jesse Campbell, Jonelle Price and Tim Price ending with a total of 99.60. In third, Australia came up the inside to squeeze Great Britain out of a podium position with 112.00 penalties. Sadly, for Great Britain, Laura Collett and Gemma Tattersall had problems on the cross country and ended up dropping to fourth place despite the two excellent rounds from Piggy French and Imogen Murray. In the individual, Ingrid Klimke riding SAP Hale Bob won with a total of 24.70 penalties. In second was Michael Jung riding fischerChipmunk FRH with 25.50 both from Germany and in third was Australia’s Christopher Burton with 27.00 penalties riding Quality Purdey.

The Dressage Grand Prix Special. Part two for the Lambertz Nations Cup.

In this class, sponsored by Meggle the main riders all came in the last few. Before the class started the team positions were: in first place Germany, in second Denmark and third was The United States with Great Britain in fourth.

Like in the Grand Prix – Great Britain’s Charlotte Fry rode Dark Legend in a stupendous test just before the lunch break, taking the lead with 75.128%.

However, the very next horse, ridden by Ireland’s Judy Reynolds snatched the lead by a slim margin with a total score of 75.894% riding Vancouver K. With scores like this, we were almost bound to see the 80% mark broken by the main contenders later in the day and so it proved to be. Two horses in of the ten left to run, Denmark’s Daniel Bachmann Andersen riding Blue Hors Don Olymberio scored 78.170%. Three horses later, in front of the packed stadium in warm sunshine, came the first of the final three German riders to compete. Jessica Von Bredow-Werndl riding TSF Dalera BB took the lead with 79.021% and  the judge at C from Denmark Susanne Baarup giving the first 80% of the day. Next in was Dorothee Schneider, who rode Showtime 59

so well two days ago, went into the lead early on consistently gaining over 80% for the 35 marked movements in the test. The combination left the arena with 83.617% with all five judges scoring her over 80%. The penultimate rider, 49 year old Isabell Werth riding Bella Rose II for Germany started as she meant to go on. She scored a constant 9 in the trot work which took her easily into the lead. In the final piaffe down the centre line she scored a perfect 10 for the movement, thus putting her into the lead with 84.447% with only one more to come. Charlotte Dujardin riding Erlentanz for Great Britain started well, scoring highly for her trot work with such smooth transitions from one movement to the next until the final piaffe before the walk, when a wheel seem to come loose. She dropped down to fifth place after that, but during the rest of the test pulled herself back up, until again the final piaffe of the test was weak. However, she did achieve over 80% at 80.277% and finished in third place.

In the final standings for the Team Nations Cup, Germany was the runaway winner over both parts. The Danish Team took second place despite one of their team being eliminated during the Grand Prix Special and third spot was taken by The United States, all of whose members rode consistently competent tests.

With the Team competition done, it was time to turn to the individual winner. For this the top 15 combinations, determined by the scores in the Grand Prix and GP Special, came forward to the Freestyle to Music – The Kur – sponsored by Deutsche Bank.

With the German pair of Isabell Werth and Dorothee Schneider so dominant in the earlier classes, it was fairly clear who would be first and second individually. The third spot was more up for grabs as another

German rider, Jessica Von Bredow-Werndl and Great Britain’s Charlotte Dujardin had very close accumulated scores before the Kur with only 1.408% dividing the pair.  Was there an advantage in the draw? Charlotte was fourth from the end and Jessica was the penultimate rider. Both were scoring heavily with over 80% from the start. (Just worth mentioning at this point that in the Kur, the judges give two marks for each movement, one for the movements’s difficulty and the second for how well the movement is executed.) Charlotte ended up with a rather disappointing score for her, with 83.995% which gave an opening to Jessica who finished with a score of 87.595%  a personal best. This not only put her ahead of in the Kur class, but more importantly, secured her the third position in the individual competition.

The top two were never likely to be challenged. Dorothee Schneider rode a lovely test and she secured second place in the class scoring 89.660%.

Finally, in came Isabell Werth who just happened to be celebrating her fiftieth birthday today! She rode a near perfect test to the music of Beethoven. For the trot she used Beethoven’s 9^th symphony, the walk she used the Moonlight Sonata and finally for the canter, it was Beethoven’s Fifth. A beautifully ridden Kur with no mistakes earned her a massive 90.450%. What a birthday present!!! Congratulations from Horse Talk UK for her half century!

Therefore the German contingent took all the podium positions individually. First as expected was Isabell Werth riding her 15 year old Westphalian mare Bella Rose II. She won all three components of the competition. In second was Dorothee Schneider riding her 13 year old Hanoverian gelding Showtime 59 and third was another German combination – Jessica Von Bredow-Werndl riding her 12 year old Trakehner mare Delera BB.

Aachen Rolex Show Jumping Grand Prix

As we will be covering the show jumping extensively next week from Hickstead, we are not going to talk too much about it in Aachen, especially as most unusually, Great Britain failed even to send a team. Only two riders went from GB to Aachen, Scott Brash and Ben Maher. In the event, Sweden won the Mercedes Benz Nations Cup with a total of 4 faults denying Germany a clean sweep of all the different Nations cups on offer at the show. They came second with a total of 5 faults and France were third with 8 faults. There were seven countries with teams, two of which were eliminated during the competition, Belgium and Switzerland.

The individual Aachen Rolex Grand Prix had a terrific atmosphere as it always does with a capacity crowd of 40,000 spectators. This a slightly different competition in that there are two rounds, then the jump off. All the horses which scored 4 faults or less in the first round go in the second.

The clears from both rounds added together then go for the jump off to decide the winner. From the 40 starters in the first round, there were 9 clear rounds, one with 2 time faults and eight with 4 faults; one elimination and four retirees. In the second round, of the eighteen starters, there were seven clears to go into the jump off. The first four all had one down. In came Kent Farrington riding Gazelle BWP, a 13 year old mare for the United States and went clear in 43.93 seconds. He was followed in by Ben Maher riding for Great Britain, 10 year old gelding Explosion W who had 4 faults, but in the fastest time of 43.94 seconds. With only one more clear, Ben Maher finished in third place. The second place was German rider Daniel Deusser who went clear but in a slower time to Kent Farrington with 44.35 seconds. He was riding Scuderia 1918 Tobago Z, an eleven year old stallion. So The USA win with Kent Farrington. He takes home £1million Euros for his efforts!!!!

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