Denmark’s penultimate rider has laid down a mighty score to take the home side into a tussle for gold that is set to go right to the wire. Tobias Thorning Joergensen has scored just a fraction under 80% in the Orifarm Healthcare FEI World Para Dressage Championships with Jolene Hill to set up a truly thrilling finale to the team competition.
Such are Tobias’ high standards that he was little disappointed with his mark of 79.27% – he said he had hoped for 80% today – but he also explained that his warm-up had been far from ideal.
“There were some things with Jolene in the warm-up and everything went kind of crazy,” said Tobias, declining to go into more detail.
“I went from going in thinking I would smash 80% today to just thinking I would just go though the test without mistakes and make a fluent and pretty test and not go for the extra.
“It was a good score – there were no mistakes and it was pretty fluent I think but I would have liked some more [energy] in the trot. The walk and the halt were better today, but I missed the last bit of action and activity.”
Tobias’ test has sent Denmark surging to the top of the World Para Dressage Championships results leaderboard and his teammate Nicole Johnsen also laid down a valuable score of 73.31% to give the team a finishing mark of 229.75%.
Their main rivals for the gold medal, reigning world champions the Netherlands, have a rider left to go: Frank Hosmar on Alphaville NOP, who will need to slightly improve on his individual competition score and record 75.31% for the Netherlands to go ahead and claim gold.
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