1. Lottie Fry leading team GB to championship silver
Great Britain won team silver at the World Dressage Championships, behind home team Denmark who beat the Brits to gold by just 1.2 points. Germany took bronze. In the final group of riders, Britain’s Lottie Fry piled on the pressure for the last few riders to go by scoring a personal best of 80.84% on the 11-year-old championship first-timer Glamourdale, owned by Van Olst Horses. This happened 10 years to the day that Britain won gold at the London Olympics in 2012. Lottie has cemented herself as the dressage rider of the moment and we wait with such enthusiasm to see her and Glammy ride for the individual medals in Herning. But it was a team effort, with Richard Davison and Bubblingh having got the ball rolling on day one, self-appointed “bass player” Gareth Hughes raising British hopes with a very good grand prix on Classic Briolinca, despite having Covid, and Charlotte Dujardin continuing to do the seemingly impossible – her nine-year-old ride Imhotep has only contested a handful of grands prix in his life but still produced a fantastic score here. What a team, what a performance and what a result.
Read more about the team competition in Herning
2. Oliver Townend becoming the British national champion
Oliver Townend was crowned British national champion – being the highest-placed Brit, finishing second on Mark and Angela Chamberlayne’s Dreamliner at the Gatcombe Horse Trials British open championship. Oliver was in fifth going into the final cross-country phase on the 12-year-old, who was bred by his current owners, but pulled off a super-speedy clear inside the usually elusive time. Oliver said: “This is a very special result for his breeders and for my new job with Caunton Stud. You wouldn’t think of him as a quick horse, but at the same time he is by Jumbo, who had stamina, and he is out of a full thoroughbred mare, so I knew he’d get the trip.”
Find out all about this very ‘special’ result
Oliver Townend and Dreamliner
3. Disappointment for Irish team member at worlds – but her horse is ‘sound and well’
Ireland’s Sorrell Klatzko was eliminated in the grand prix at the Blue Hors FEI World Dressage Championships. Sorrell and the nine-year-old stallion Turbo, owned by Sorrell and Janine Shoffner, had just completed the extended trot in the first quarter of the test when the bell was rung by judge Christof Umbach at C. The ground jury deemed Turbo to be unlevel. In an update on the evening of the same day, Sorrell told H&H Turbo has been checked and found “sound and well”. “On review of the videos it looks as though he lost his balance around the corner resulting in him losing the rhythm of the movement,” she said. “The main thing is Turbo is ok.”
Sorrell Klatzko and Turbo were eliminated in the grand prix at the World Dressage Championships
You might also be interested in:
‘A championship team is like a band’: Gareth Hughes on team dynamics and why the fourth rider is so important
Get to know international dressage sensation Cathrine Dufour – one of the favourites to take gold at the 2022 World Championships
‘The right side of chaotic and brilliant’: Cathrine Laudrup-Dufour spearheads Danish charge to world team gold on home soil
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