British-based Canadian rider Bert Sheffield produced a solid plus-70% test to sit at the business end of the World Para Dressage Championships results table at the early stages in the grade III individual contest (Thursday, 11 August).
Just to be at these championships is a happy result for Bert and her “heart horse” Fairuza, who has recovered following a mystery illness earlier this year.
The pair had a strong start and showed lovely activity through their clean test, showing neat walk pirouettes and ending with some classy trot work. Their test divided the judges, with marks from 68.09% to 74.71%, giving them a final score of 70.88% in the individual results at the Orifarm Healthcare FEI World Para Dressage Championships, presented by Elsass Fonden.
“She has developed so much since the Paralympics in Tokyo,” said Bert, who found the now 13-year-old mare via a H&H advert in 2015. “Her whole demeanour is so much more grown up. I feel like she trusts me, she is really with me, that was the big difference for me, she was a different horse today.”
Earlier this summer, the 13-year-old mare came down with a sudden illness and has since made a good recovery.
“We were clipping her – it was the day before we were due to go to Germany for training,” said Bert. “After we clipped her, I went to take her out of the stable and she was really not very well. She’s usually pretty good to clip, but she was really good.”
She explained the mare had not shown “any symptoms other than just being sweet” while she was clipped. But as soon as she took her out of the stable, it was clear something was “very wrong”.
“We phoned the vets and next thing we knew we were dashing to Rossdales where she spent a week,” said Bert.
“She’s had several courses of antibiotics – she was running a fever and they checked her for colic and all sorts of things. There was nothing really majorly obvious. She just seemed to be really not very well.”
They put their plans on hold – “the horse is far more important” – and when they were sure she was well again, they gradually started to bring her back into work.
“We’ve taken it very steady,” said Bert, who has since been training in Germany with the mare.
“Horses don’t lose fitness quite as quickly as humans do, so her base fitness was still there to an extent, and we were able just to quietly bring her back into the work and start preparing her.”
She credited the team around her for being able to do so safely with the mare’s interest front and centre, adding the cause remains “one of those weird horsey mysteries”.
“I was able to talk to the nutritionists at TopSpec and I was able to talk to HorseHage about keeping her forage the same so we didn’t risk changing anything that might possibly cause something to flare up,” she said.
Grade IV, grade I and grade II individual medals were awarded on Tuesday, with grades III and V medals decided today.
In a change up of the format for this World Para Dressage Championships, riders perform the “team test” to decide the results of the individual competition, and the slightly more difficult “individual test” for the team competition, which begins on Friday.
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