Day 6 and Day 7

Yesterday was our final day at the Aachen showgrounds. It was definitely bittersweet! We began the day by meeting with German youth coach and young horse trainer Oliver Oelrich. He explained the German youth and young horse systems to us. The young riders begin doing the ponies, then do the juniors, then do the young riders, then do the under 25 Grand Prix, finally do the senior Grand Prix; the young horses begin doing the 3 year old classes, then do the 4 year old classes, do the 5 year old classes, do the 6 year old classes, do the Nurnberger Burgpokal developing horse Prix St Georges classes, do the Louisdor Cup developing horse Grand Prix classes, and then finally do the senior Grand Prix classes. These pipeline programs allow talent, in both riders and horses, to be spotted early on and guided to the ultimate senior Grand Prix level success. He really believes in matching young riders (with good coaches!) with young horses owned by breeders. These matches are mutually beneficial: the rider takes on the expenses of the horse but gains training mileage and show experience while the horse is well trained without breeders having to pay expensive monthly training fees. Thank you Oliver for sharing your knowledge with us!

L to R: Annie Morris, Sarah Cohen, Rosie Julian-Simoes, Oliver Oelrich, Sadie Lahey, Jennifer Foulon, Charlotte Bredahl

In the afternoon, we watched the Grand Prix freestyles. It was a very exciting and close race, with Charlotte Dujardin on Valegro edging out Kristina Sprehe on Desperados for gold by only 0.25%. The judges were split right down the middle as to whose freestyle was superior! Dujardin is an incredible rider and Valegro epitomizes power with relaxation, but they had mistakes in both their lines of one tempis. Sprehe is also a gorgeous rider and Desperados looked the most consistent that he had all week. I don’t think I could have decided which freestyle was better! Both were a pleasure to watch! Beatriz Ferrer-Salat on Delgado took the bronze with an extremely harmonious ride and wonderful music. The whole class was fantastic to watch, even in the cold and rainy weather!

After the class, we had the opportunity to speak again with German FEI 4* judge Christoph Hess. He is such a positive, enthusiastic, passionate ambassador for our sport! He shared his opinions on the freestyles and answered our various questions about judging. Thank you Christoph for the education and the laughs! We then had to run off to catch the train back to Dusseldorf, as we planned to spend the night in the airport hotel before heading back to Newark the following day.

Today we returned to Newark and went our separate ways. It was so hard to say goodbye! Charlotte and Annie were amazing chaperones and mentors. Charlotte gave us a judge’s, trainer’s, and rider’s point of view as we watched the schooling and the tests. She really helped us train our critical eyes! Annie helped us understand the way a rider’s position can positively and negatively affect the horse’s way of going. She made sure that we really understood the theory behind what we saw, which was incredibly helpful. Both Charlotte and Annie are such kind, honest, wonderful people and it was pleasure to get to know them! Sadie, Sarah, and Rosie were also so much fun to be around. None of us had ever met before, but through our shared passion for riding and horsemanship we quickly bonded. Thank you so much again to the Dressage Foundation for sending us on this incredible adventure!! Wow, we learned more than I even thought was possible!

I still plan to post more photos and tidbits in the next few days, so stay tuned for more updates to come! Thank you to everyone for reading and I hope you've been enjoying everything so far! :)