Day 5

It is crazy to think that today was our second-to-last day in Aachen. We are having so much fun, we don’t ever want to leave! Our day began talking to Australian FEI 5* judge Mary Seefried, who is a member of the Judges Supervisory Panel (JSP) here in Aachen. The JSP, Mary explained, is a device that has been in place in lots of sports with semi-subjective judging (like gymnastics and figure skating) and so was recently instituted in FEI championship dressage competition in order to keep judging fair for both competitors and judges. It consists of a panel of three people (two judges and one trainer): one person looks at the test going on in the arena, one person watches the marks come up, and one person watches a video of the ride. If the first person sees something funny, he asks about the scores. The second person tells him, and if the individual marks from the judges are two or more points apart, then all three people rewind and rewatch the movement on the video. They can only change a score for a technical reason (for example, one judge does not appear to see that the rider made a counting error in the two tempis or that a flying change was late behind – or a judge appears to see a mistake when really there was not one), not for a quality reason. They can adjust an individual judge’s mark up or down, but only to the highest or lowest of the other judges’ marks. They have to finish this process before the next rider comes into the arena, so this whole process happens extremely quickly. Out of approximately 16,000 marks given during the 72 rides in the Grand Prix test, 55 individual marks were changed (a very small percentage!).

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

Next we spoke with Dutch FEI trainer Henk van Bergen. Henk spoke about his life and journey and we were all incredibly inspired by how humble and honest he was. He is the son of a baker, and when he was young he put a shoebox covered in horse photos in the bakery and asked for donations so that he would be able to buy a pony! The main takeaway: if you want to be successful, you have to take initiative, and also work a little bit harder and do everything a little bit better than everyone else.

Sitting with Henk van Bergen

Then it was time to watch the Grand Prix Special! It was an incredibly exciting competition, with some horses and riders really excelling and others making unusual errors that kept their scores lower than expected. Tinne Vilhelmson Silfven impressed us with her lovely contact with the bit and quiet aids while riding Don Auriello and finished on a score of 76.148%. Fiona Bigwood’s mare Atterupgaard’s Orthilia showed absolutely fantastic passage, and we can’t wait to keep watching this mare as she continues to grow stronger and stronger. Today she earned a 74.510%. Carl Hester produced a fault free, harmonious, wonderful ride aboard Nip Tuck, scoring 77.003%. Then Kristina Sprehe and Desperados came in and blew away the competition, also producing a nearly fault free effort to go into the lead on 83.067%. The question was then: can Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro top this result? The answer: yes they can! They came in and had an incredibly powerful yet relaxed round. Despite a small error in the one tempis, they commandingly took the lead with a 87.577%. Beatriz Ferrer-Salat on Delgado and Hans Peter Minderhoud on Glock’s Johnson followed Charlotte and Valegro, and both put in consistent and powerful rounds as well. Beatriz Ferrer-Salat ended up in 4^th place with 77.395% and Hans-Peter Minderhoud took the bronze medal with 79.034%.

Carl Hester on Nip Tuck waving to the crowd after an excellent ride

Kristina Sprehe on Desperados

Charlotte Dujardin on Valegro

After watching the awards ceremony, we had the opportunity to speak with German FEI 4* judge and master trainer Christoph Hess. He is also one of the commentators here at Aachen and we discussed the rides we had just watched. He was really impressed with Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro (as were we all!) and felt that they absolutely deserved the win today. He also felt that many combinations, such as Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro as well as Kristina Sprehe and Desperados, produced much better rounds today in the Grand Prix Special than earlier in the week in the Grand Prix. He explained that it is very important to recognize not just mistakes (which everyone sees) but also correct riding and training. The goal of dressage training is to have a happy horse, and you can see if a horse really is happy by looking at his body language. He told us that the eye of the horse tells a story, which I thought was a really cool insight! We also discussed the importance of correct rider aids: you must use your calf, not always your spur, when using your leg aid.

Thank you so much to Mary Seefried, Henk van Bergen, and Christoph Hess for all of your words of wisdom today! We learned a lot and had a blast talking to each incredible person. It’s hard to believe but tomorrow is the last day of competition here in Aachen! The top 15 combinations from today’s Grand Prix Special will compete in the Grand Prix Freestyle. Then we will get on a train and head back to Dusseldorf, where we will stay the night so we are ready to fly back to Newark on Monday. Please keep following for more update and photos in the coming days! :)