Ramblings from Fink Family Farm: World Cup 2015 Grand Prix Freestyle

Friday, April 24, 2015

World Cup 2015 Grand Prix Freestyle

At last, on Saturday, April 18, came the freestyles we had been waiting for. The opportunity to see Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro in person was too good to miss... and that's why we found ourselves in Las Vegas.

As for the Grand Prix on the first day of competition, I thought all the rides were fabulous. But with Axel Steiner talking in our ears, telling us the finer points of what was going on, or should be, we started to get better at telling the differences between performances. The only way to see these differences is to watch the videos of the rides. We hope to buy DVDs of this FEI World Cup 2015 and watch them again. One time through is not enough. Especially not for the incredible Valegro's freestyle!

But, for what it's worth, and for remembrance sake for myself and Ruth, here are the horses and their scores in the order they appeared. The score on the monitor is provisional. (And the ranking is where they placed relative to those horses that had gone before them... so for a brief moment, the first rider enjoyed ranking first.) The score in the caption below is the final, official score. The first line in the score is technical, the second artistic.

16th 69.357

Jojo AZ

11th 74.036

Romeo Star

17th 68.571

Axis TSF

13th 71.214

Qui Vincit Dynamis

10th 74.804

My Lady

9th 75.018

The first nine horses were in the first bay. Axel Steiner told us that we would see even more spectacular freestyles in the second group of nine horses. And he was, of course, correct.

Mariett

12th 73.839

Fleetwood

15th 70.625

Di Lapponia T

14th 71.000

The first nine horses were in the first bay. Axel Steiner told us that we would see freestyles even better, technically and artistically, in the second group of nine horses. And he was, of course, correct.