Boekelo Dressage Recap

Boekelo’s Friday album

Dressage has just concluded at the Boekelo CCI3* and wold champion Michael Jung leads a field of 100 competitors by five points with River of Joy.  As one EN commenter said, even if Sam gets sold it looks like Michael has a very nice CCI3* horse.  Tiana Coudray and Ringwood Magister stole the show for the US by delivering a 46.2 and sit in 6th after the dressage.  The US had two other competitors on Friday–Aimee Chambers and After Eight are in 21stand Sinead Halpin moved into 39th.

With very strong Friday dressage performances, the US moved into third position in the Boekelo team competition.  The US squad is 14 points behind Germany and just one point behind the hometown Dutch team.  As Doug said in one of his blogs, Boekelo is not a dressage test and the US has some excellent cross-country horses as we look forward to Saturday’s XC. 

Friday dressage overview:

Links: Doug’s Blog, Sinead’s Blog, Tiana’s Blog

Regarding grants: A recent email from a reader alerted me to the fact that in a couple of previous posts about USEF travel grants I may have implied that the USEF paid for travel expenses to Blenheim.  While the USEF provided logistical support and US riders competing internationally work through the USEF, the Blenheim riders did not receive financial support from the USEF.  Sharon White and her wonderful support group in particular spent a lot of energy raising money for the Blenheim trip by hosting a derby-cross and other fundraisers.  My understanding is that Will Coleman received a training grant from the USEF earlier this year, but again, that was not a Blenheim travel grant.  The reality is that international trips require a huge amount of money whether or not riders receive grant funding.

Go eventing.