Last Updated on April 2, 2024 by adminahb
After three thrilling months of competition including seven CDI shows, the curtain came down on the final day of action of the 2024 Adequan® Global Dressage Festival (AGDF) 2024 season in Wellington, FL on Sunday, March 31. This year, the largest dressage circuit in the world boasted 2000 entries in the national rings and 550 CDI entries, with 22 different nations represented.
Sweden’s seven-time Olympian Tinne Vilhelmson Silfvén added another notch to her dressage belt to cap a tremendous season with her talented string of horses, when she stood grand champion in the Future Challenge young horse Prix St. Georges series, sponsored by Diane Fellows’s company Buffalo Wild Wings.
These classes aim to identify and nurture talented, up-and-coming young FEI quality horses, giving them exposure to benefit their development with the biggest of world stages in mind — without the pressures of a CDI.
Vilhelmson Silfvén only recently started riding Kane, who used to be a licensed stallion. This was just their third test together, but the partnership’s future is already looking very promising. The rangy bay has a beautiful front end, and Vilhelmson Silfvén showed him in a soft, elastic frame with her customary quiet riding.
“It was a good ending to the season,” she said. “We’ve had Kane since he was three and he was a breeding stallion at ours, but last year we gelded him because he was a little bit too much of a stallion. We thought he would be a great competition horse, so we decided to give him a future like that. He also has a much happier life as a gelding because he was a bit too worried as a stallion and too unhappy. Now he’s the sweetest and loveliest horse to have around and he’s happy going out in a big field.”
No Spurs Is Key to Jorst’s Taming of Botticelli
At the conclusion of her ride in the 3 Graces Dressage CDI1* Intermediate I Freestyle, Charlotte Jorst (USA) punched the air in delight. Her grin only widened when her winning score of 75.77% was announced. She rode Atterupgaards Botticelli, a 12-year-old Danish gelding by Benetton Dream x Caprimond whom she has had since he was a wild five-year-old. The recent FEI rule change on spurs has been a breakthrough for the electric horse, whom Jorst showed with no spurs.
“It’s been such a long journey with that horse and he’s so hot and a bit crazy, so to get in there and hit everything in the test and for him to be so calm and confident was incredible,” she enthused. “I don’t ride him with spurs at all; I try to ride most of my horses with no spurs and no whip, just because I think it’s fun and I try to really get them on my seat.”
For more information and results, visit https://gdf.coth.com.