World Cup Dressage: Following Tradition and Looking to the Future

The Final, which will take place alongside the Longines World Cup Jumping Final in Omaha, will see 18 horse and rider combinations compete on a rectangular sand arena in the city’s CenturyLink Center, including celebrated German Olympian Isabell Werth, two-time FEI World Cup champion and current No.1 in the world.

Werth is among nine riders who will qualify from the Western European League for the Omaha event, with a maximum of three from each European country. Other less powerful qualifying leagues are in Central Europe, North America, and the Pacific (Australia and New Zealand). North America is allocated two spots, one of which will go to U.S. Olympian Laura Graves and her partner Verdades. Central Europe receives two, the Pacific league one, and there is another place for the host country and the World Cup titleholder. Last year, the Netherlands’ Hans Peter Minderhoud captured that prize on Glock’s Flirt de Lully at the Scandinavium arena in Gothenburg, Sweden.

This weekend, the final event of the Western European League qualifying circuit is set for ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) in the southern Netherlands. There, the final make-up of the group going to Omaha will be decided at the CDI-W Dressage competition in the town’s huge Brabanthallen facility. As part of that competition, Werth, Minderhoud and 24 other athletes from 10 nations across the continent will lead their mounts through different ‘tests’, or series of movements which are judged using criteria corresponding to the difficulty of the techniques, as in figure skating. The movements, with names like the ‘Passage’ (a rhythmic trotting motion), the ‘Pirouette’, ‘Flying Change of Leg’ and ‘Half-pass’ are rooted in the centuries-old training system of the Imperial Spanish Riding School of Vienna, established in the 16th century.

In any case, Europe’s best dressage riders will undoubtedly not be thinking of the history of their sport as they gather in Holland this weekend, but rather the near future — specifically the dates March 29 – April 2, 2017 in the American Midwest. There are still three or four places up for grabs in ‘s-Hertogenbosch to go to Omaha, and everything will come down to their (stylish) performances on the course.