Ros Canter and Izilot DHI. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Yesterday’s first day of dressage in Luhmühlen’s CCI5* saw none of the 21 initial riders clinch a sub-30 – and today, they were nearly as hard to come by. At the close of this phase, just two of the 42 competitors were awarded scores in the 20s by the exacting ground jury helmed by Denmark’s Anne-Mette Binder.
And leading the way as we head into cross-country? That’s the sole five-star winning partnership – so far, anyway – of this line-up. Ros Canter’s Izilot DHI has always been very capable of excellent scores, and often delivers them, but he’s also a notoriously quirky, spooky horse, and Luhmühlen’s main arena is bright, buzzy, and full of stuff – not least several looky cross-country fences, awaiting their turn for the action tomorrow. And ‘stuff’, really, is Isaac’s nemesis: when he’s had issues in the past, be it on cross-country or, as at Pau last year, before his dressage test, it’s been with objects that he has to pass, and which turn into monsters in his busy brain.
But today, he was cool, calm, and totally on the job, both before, during, and after his test, when he looked just about ready to take a nap during the steward’s obligatory bit-check procedure. That zen attitude was well rewarded, too – he and Ros were given a 24.9, just 0.6 penalties above the score that began his winning Pau campaign last autumn.
Ros Canter and Izilot DHI. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
“He’s fantastic,” says Ros of the eleven-year-old, who now holds a 3.4 penalty lead going into cross-country. That excellent score, and its resultant lead, came from some novel homework behind the scenes.
“To be fair, he’s been on great form all week. It’s just always a challenge with Izilot with his neck, and the way his neck is set on with his head, for me to know quite whether I get the outline right,” explains Ros. “Often, I don’t get it until my last ride. So I have to go back and watch old videos [of our tests] a lot. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last hour, is watching old videos and going, ‘quite how short do I need my reins? How exactly do I need him?’ because he just curls over so easily. But he’s become a real professional, bar being a bit spooky, which obviously he wasn’t today.”
There was just one mistake in their test – their second flying change came a couple of strides late, earning them two 4s and a 5.
“I really went for it in the extended [canter] and I probably just needed another half halt, and then his changes are so smooth I had to go another two strides to decide whether he changed or not,” laughs Ros. “I’d say it’s rider error rather than his error – I should have just brought him back a tiny bit more.”
Izilot DHI and groom Sarah Charnley. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Time, patience, and a rerouting of pressure continue to be the making of Isaac, who no longer schools on the flat at home, but instead, hacks a lot and is shipped elsewhere to school so he gets plenty of exposure to the unfamiliar.
“I learn more and more about him all the time, and he gets a year older every year, which helps. He’s much more settled in his brain than he used to be, and he’s very established with the movements now, so I’m able to really train the brain instead of having to go ‘right, I’ve got to teach him [the movements]’, I can keep him in a happier place much easier.”
Tomorrow’s Mike Etherington-Smith track will be Isaac’s third experience of cross-country at this level; on his first, at Pau, he won, and on his second, at Badminton last month, Ros set out knowing that the huge atmosphere and much bigger challenge of the place may not suit him. When he went green at the busy lake complex, she sagely put her hand up and decided to reroute him here, where she’s confident he’ll find his stride again.
“I’m certainly going to go out with the intention of being fast and clear, to be honest,” she says. “I haven’t come here to be middle of the pack. So hopefully I can give him a good start. It’s quite nice here at the start, in that it’s not overly dressed and there’s not [a lot of decorations]. Going around things is often what he finds a little bit worrying, and there isn’t any of that really, at the start anyway. So I’m going to go out and give it a good shot. He had a run at Little Downham, and he was good and fine there, so I don’t feel he’s lost any confidence from jumping at Badminton. We’ll go and give it a good shot, I think.”
Tom McEwen and Brookfield Quality. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Tom McEwen made a great start to the class yesterday with first ride CHF Cooliser, who now sits fourth going into tomorrow’s competition on her 30.8 – but it was his second ride, the fifteen-year-old debutant Brookfield Quality, who really made a bid for the top spot today. The pair put a 28.3 on the board and are provisionally second overnight.
“He was mega,” says Tom of ‘Nervous Norris’, who he inherited from fellow Brookfield rider Piggy March at the tail end of the 2022 season. “He listened all the way through – he never lets you down. He always tries his hardest, and that’s all you can ever ask for.”
Although Norris is a relatively late debutant at the level, he comes to Luhmühlen with a very good lead-up – he won a CCI2*-S section at Thoresby to start the year off, and then finished fourth in Bicton’s CCI4*-S last month.
“The preparations have gone really well,” says Tom. “We waited to start a little bit later in the season which, unless you went abroad, there wasn’t much to do in the UK anyway. We had a really good run at Bicton, so that was a fantastic prep for coming here, and we had a few Open Intermediates. He doesn’t tend to need too much, andhe knows what he’s doing so we got all the work done at home – and hopefully we can show it all off tomorrow.”
Tom chose Luhmühlen as the gelding’s debut, he says, “because it’s obviously a bit flatter than the UK-based five-stars. The ground is always good, especially considering how much rain we’ve had out here.”
Tom will ride cross-country three times tomorrow – twice in this class, and once in the CCI4*-S, where he’s vying for an Olympic call-up with the former Nicola Wilson ride JL Dublin.
“I’ve got three different rides; two very different in the five-star, so I’ve got to reevaluate between horses and assess what I need to do on each one,” he says. “For Brookfield Quality, I think it suits him really well, I just need to build him up into the course and then let him flow. There’s plenty of questions all the way round, power questions, technical questions, so there’s a lot to do.”
Nico Aldinger and Timmo. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Day one leaders Laura Collett and Hester now sit third, while fourth place is held by Germany’s Nicolai Aldinger and Timmo, who earned a colossal, and well-deserved, cheer when posting a 30.9 in their long-awaited five-star start. Nico, who lives just ten minutes from Luhmühlen and has frequently contested the CCI4*-S here, had planned to start in this class last year, but withdrew at the first horse inspection when Timmo knocked himself on the way down from the stables and took a few sore steps. Then, they put an entry in for Kentucky this spring, but at their final prep run in Strzegom, the gelding stepped on a clinch and, while uninjured, needed a few days off, disrupting his fitness work.
And so just to start is a phenomenal feeling for Nico – but to start on such a positive note, and with the full force of the home crowd’s enthusiasm behind him, is even better.
“It is pretty special, absolutely,” he says with a grin. “It helps a little bit that I have a cold ,so I have some pills inside, so I’m more relaxed! I slept a lot today. Normally I’m really nervous, but my girlfriend always says, ‘Luhmühlen, you just have to ride like every other competition’. I put myself under so much pressure, because my family is here, all the owners, all my friends, are my supporters are here — and then I want to be especially good. Last time, it didn’t work out too good. But today, I just wanted to have fun, and dressage can be a little bit fun. But I hope I have more fun tomorrow!”
Nico Aldinger and Timmo. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Fourteen-year-old Timmo comes into this competition in very promising form: the Holsteiner, with whom Nico competed at the European Championships last year, finished in the top twenty in the CCI4*-S at Marbach in May, and then ran quickly at Baborowko last month at the same level to finish on his dressage score and take third place.
“He feels amazing,” says Nico. “We’ve changed the plan a lot this year and in the end, it’s worked. I’m hoping it works tomorrow and on Sunday too, but I’m really happy, and I don’t want to put pressure on him and just keep him happy. He was pretty good in Baborowko, where we were third, and I just want to keep the good feeling for him. He’s a bit special, and if you just keep him happy then he gives you everything you want back.”
Belgium’s Lara de Liedekerke-Meier, third last night on her homebred debutant Hooney d’Arville, is now sixth going into the second phase, while a duo of young up-and-comers from two nations take seventh and eighth place, respectively.
Jennifer Kuehnle and Sammy Davis Junior. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Libussa Lübbeke, who rides as part of Germany’s Warendorf programme for talented young eventers, made a fantastic start to her five-star debut with Caramia, putting a 31.9 on the board for seventh, while Ireland’s Jennifer Kuehnle sits eighth on 32 with Sammy Davis Junior, who she inherited the ride on from partner Cathal Daniels.
“I was hoping to be this good, but you never know,” says a delighted Libussa. “For the first 5* test, there are many more flying changes and she felt really good, very comfortable, and I was very happy how relaxed she was. It was a good feeling.”
One of the great weapons in Libussa’s arsenal is the support of her fellow Warendorf riders, most of whom are on site either competing or helping, and who include among their ranks Jérome Rôbiné and Emma Brussau, both of whom made their five-star debut here last year and can share what they learned along the way.
“It’s really nice. You feel really good with them around you,” says Libussa, adding that “it’s very special, too, with a homebred horse – she was produced by my brother. Going into cross-country, I feel quite good, I have to say. She’s a real cross country machine and I can trust her 200%, and that’s a really good feeling. So I’m very much looking forward to it!”
Mollie Summerland and Flow 7. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
2021 champion Mollie Summerland, who remains Luhmühlen’s youngest-ever winner, returned with a bang with a sparkling test with debutant Flow 7, who trended in the lead throughout much of his work but then slipped down the ranks due to his flying changes, which are still a work in progress. Mollie was thrilled to take ninth place overnight on a score of 33 with the young, talented, extraordinarily leggy gelding, who was bred in Germany and reunited with his breeder en route to the event this week.
“I do think that he has all the ability to go really low in this phase, but I wanted to not do too much work and leave him as fresh as I can for tomorrow, because I think that’s the biggest and hardest test for him,” says Mollie, who’s well known for her prowess in the first phase with her string of tall, dark, and handsome European geldings – and, most notably, her Luhmühlen-winning former partner, Charly van ter Heiden.
Of the changes, she says, “I felt he was a little bit more nervous down the bottom of the arena. So those ones on the counter canter, I didn’t really practice them outside, because I know he’s green with them and I didn’t want to upset him. We were going to be happy with anything under 35, so I was pleased with that.”
Pleased, too, were Flow’s owners, Paula and Adrian Cloke, who had played a crucial – if long-distance – role in Mollie’s success in 2021, when they lent her a lorry to use for the week and offered plenty of emotional support through the process of tackling a pandemic five-star.
“We all cried when he finished the test, didn’t we?” says Paula.
“No, no, I just had dust in my eye,” protests Adrian.
No judgment from us: there’s plenty of reason to get a bit teary, not least because Flow, their first-ever event horse, has been a bit of a child prodigy.
“He only started eventing when he was seven, so he’s only been doing this just over three years,” explains Mollie. “So he’s really lacking in mileage – even the other ten-year-olds in the field, they might have started when they were maybe five or six. So it’s all really new to him, and he’s just kept coping, and stepping up all the time. He’s exceeded all our expectations.”
“I bought him unseen off the internet when he was a six-year-old, so I didn’t even go and try him,” she continues. “He just came off the lorry, and he’s a really similar type to all of mine, so I kind of knew that he would probably be a horse I’d get along with well, and he’s just gone from strength to strength really. I think he has so much more to give, and that’s the most exciting thing.”
In the longer-term, she hopes that will take them to a five-star closer to home – but for now, Mollie’s delighted to have a reason to return to her happiest hunting ground.
“I love this show, and I just felt that if we were possibly thinking about Badminton, that this might be quite a good stepping stone on the way there,” she says.
Emily Hamel and Corvett. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Both of our US representatives have now completed their dressage tests: yesterday’s, Katherine Coleman and Monbeg Senna, will go into cross-country in sixteenth place on a 34.2, while today’s, Emily Hamel and Corvett, are 35th on a 38.7 after some tricky moments in the latter half of the test.
“The trot work, I was pretty pleased with, but then it’s just, like, the canter work is what gets us,” she says. “But that’s kind of the usual – he anticipates the changes ,and we’ve been working on it, but just couldn’t quite show that today. But on to the jumping, I suppose!”
The jumping, as fans of the pair will know, is absolutely where they shine: the huge-jumping, bold gelding and his gutsy rider know one another inside and out after eight years together, and this will be their seventh five-star start, though it’s a Luhmühlen debut for both.
“I’m feeling pretty good about it, and I think I have a good plan at the moment,” says Emily, whose last run at the level, at Maryland last year, saw them finish eleventh. Now, she’s excited to add another event to a tally that includes both US five-stars, Burghley, and Badminton.
“I’ve always wanted to do [Luhmühlen], because I think it’d be cool to do all the 5*s –and I’ve heard it’s a really friendly event,” she says. “Everybody’s just like, ‘everyone’s so friendly’, and there’s lots of arenas, and the footing is good. I think the footing on course is great. So there’s a lot of positive things, but actually, this was kind of my plan B. I wasn’t originally coming here, but with Chatsworth being cancelled… I came over to the UK with the USEF Development Programme, and so this was not my plan. But then it turned out that way, and now I’m here, and I’m glad because I can get another 5* in.”
The relationship between horse and rider is a huge part of their success together so far.
“I think it’s a big factor – we do know each other really well. So it just feels really comfortable going out there — maybe I should be a bit more nervous! But I just trust him and I know he can jump anything, from anywhere,” she says. “He’s a really quirky horse, but for some reason he kind of chose me. I haven’t tried to micromanage him too much; his jumping style is not your ordinary jumping style, but it works for him, and so I’ve just kind of tried to stay out of the way and let him figure it out.”
Tomorrow’s CCI5* cross-country will kick off bright and early at 8.45 a.m. tomorrow (7.45 a.m. BST/2.45 a.m. EST), with fourth-placed Tom McEwen and CHF Cooliser pathfinding. You can check out the times in full here, and keep it locked on EN for a gallery of all the fences that’ll be jumped out on course. To rewatch all of the action from the last two days, and to catch tomorrow live, head on over to Horse & Country TV – and, as always, Go Eventing.
The top ten following dressage in Luhmühlen’s CCI5*.
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