Should Dalera Win the World Cup Dressage Final for the Second Year in a Row? Mais Oui!

Dancing to Parisian chanteuses, Germany’s Jessica von Bredow-Werndl wins second consecutive title at the 2023 FEI World Cup Dressage Final in Omaha

Story and photographs by Jennifer O. Bryant

Now they were 13.

Down from the intended 17 to 16 before the FEI World Cup Dressage Final Omaha 2023 even began—Moldovan rider Alisa Glinka on Aachen was denied a visa for travel to the US due to Glinka’s holding dual Russian citizenship and Aachen’s FEI registration as Russian-owned—the field shrank day by day until there were only 13 horse/rider combinations left to vie for the coveted trophy.

First out was the Netherlands’ Dinja van Liere, who withdrew the 11-year-old KWPN stallion Hermes N.O.P. (Easy Game x Flemmingh) just minutes before her Grand Prix test April 5. Then the 15-year-old Hanoverian stallion Franziskus FRH (Fidertanz x Alabaster), ridden by Ingrid Klimke of Germany, withdrew after the Grand Prix, citing a misstep. The final blow came April 7, the morning of the Grand Prix Freestyle, when the 11-year-old Danish Warmblood stallion Torveslettens Titanium RS2 (Totilas x Stedinger) reportedly suffered a colic episode and had to be withdrawn from the competition that would decide the 2023 World Cup Dressage Final championship, to the dismay of rider Marieke van der Putten of the Netherlands. Thankfully for fans of the US entrants, Alice Tarjan on Serenade MF, Steffen Peters on Suppenkasper, and Anna Buffini on FRH Davinia la Douce remained healthy and sound. A mostly American audience filled an estimated two-thirds of the CHI Health Center’s 20,000-seat indoor stadium—and the global roster of competitors including the decorated Isabell Werth of Germany commented that the crowd was supportive, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable about dressage.

It’s All About Freestyle

The World Cup Dressage Final was created to showcase freestyle, and as such it’s a unique dressage championship competition in that the Grand Prix Freestyle results alone decide the winner, explained US FEI 5* dressage judge Janet Foy, who was the head of the ground jury for the Freestyle. The Grand Prix serves mostly to determine the draw order for the Freestyle, she said.

In Omaha, we were treated to a wide variety of freestyles. Competitors have felt increasingly emboldened to express themselves through their choice of music, and tonight’s freestyle tests ranged from the traditional, to the whimsical, to just plain fun.

Regardless, Foy emphasized that music likes and dislikes do not govern judges’ marks.

“If we judged by emotion, then we could not have seven people [judges] who have the same placings,” Foy said afterward. “I think our placings tonight were very good and very close, and we had four absolutely top, super music, tens for music, tens for choreography; there were a lot of tens. It was a super night.”

No Regrets for von Bredow-Werndl

With her 2020 Tokyo Olympic gold medal and 2022 FEI World Cup Dressage Final champion partner the 16-year-old Trakehner mare TSF Dalera BB (Easy Game x Handryk), Jessica von Bredow-Werndl of Germany easily reclaimed her title in Omaha. After sitting out the 2022 World Dressage Championships to give birth to her second child, von Bredow-Werndl showed that she and Dalera were back on top, handily winning the Grand Prix Freestyle in Omaha on a score of 90.482%, more than 3 percentage points above the second-place finisher, Denmark’s Nanna Skodborg Merrald on the 15-year-old Oldenburg gelding Blue Hors Zepter (Blue Hors Zack x Wolkentanz II) (87.146%). Dalera danced to quintessentially Parisian music—the refrain of which, of course, was Edith Piaf’s iconic “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.” Less noticeably than in Wednesday’s Grand Prix, Dalera again took a tiny step backward after her entry halt before going straight into a balanced (always balanced!) piaffe. The pair’s technical excellence and artistry impressed the seven-judge panel, all of whom placed them first, with Foy awarding them a stratospheric 99.600% artistic score.

Von Bredow-Werndl referred to the mare, with whom she’s been paired for eight years, as her soulmate. “I felt her talent for piaffe and passage” in the beginning, she said, although she added that it took her 18 months to teach Dalera flying changes. She admitted that she eschewed sightseeing in Omaha in favor of spending time with her beloved mount.

A stirring instrumental score custom-composed for the powerful Blue Hors Zepter helped to put Merrald in second place—quite an accomplishment considering that rider and horse had been paired for only four months prior to Omaha. Interestingly, the horse that put Merrald on the top of the international dressage sport—her 2022 World Championships mount, Blue Hors Zack—is Zepter’s sire. Both have the same power and trainability, said Merrald, who said that Zepter may even surpass his famous sire in terms of talent.

Without question, no one in the house had more fun during the GP Freestyle than Isabell Werth. As she did in Herning 2022, Werth and her current top mount, the 13-year-old German Sport Horse gelding DSP Quantaz (Quaterback x Hohenstein), thoroughly enjoyed their medley of 1980s Bonnie Tyler hits including “Straight from the Heart” and “It’s a Heartache.” Werth looked so relaxed, even grinning and mugging through the test, that one might have missed the fact that her freestyle was stupendously difficult, featuring such feats as one-tempi changes to a piaffe pirouette directly into a canter pirouette. She confidently held up an index finger after her test to indicate where she thought her performance should place, and I suspect she was less than pleased with her score of 85.761 for third place.

“Mopsie” Earns Raves; Buffini and Tarjan Finish Strong

His many US fans, not to mention the worldwide following for the “Rave Horse,” would have loved to have seen Steffen Peters on the podium for his freestyle with the 15-year-old KWPN gelding Suppenkasper (Spielberg x Krack C). The Terry Ciotti Gallo-designed routine, featuring the now-familiar strains of Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance” paired with club-type music and a whimsical final center-line vocal in “Mopsie’s” “voice” about a horse from San Diego, went viral after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and earned Mopsie the nickname of the Rave Horse. There was a lot to rave about Peters’ World Cup Final Freestyle—much improved over the Grand Prix, and a test that Peters called one of Mopsie’s best ever. The effort was good enough for a score of 83.921% and fourth place, the highest US finish.

Right on Peters’ heels was Anna Buffini. In her second World Cup Final appearance ever, she finished an impressive sixth aboard the 16-year-old Hanoverian mare FRH Davinia la Douce (Don Frederico x A Jungle Prince) (77.843%). Her freestyle music—which she’s said she loves in part because it’s quintessentially American—is from the Top Gun Maverick soundtrack, with the addition of some vocals sung by Buffini herself. The music was a good match for the powerful “Diva” and had the audience clapping along to their piaffe-passage tour. “I’m thrilled. I couldn’t have asked for more,” Buffini said afterward. “I couldn’t have asked for a better test. We were on purpose conservative on the first day to have a clean test, and we pushed more today. And to still have a clean test when taking more risk is everything you could want.”

Also moving up in the standings was World Cup Dressage Final first-timer Alice Tarjan on her 10-year-old Hanoverian mare, Serenade MF (Sir Donnerhall x Don Principe). Light, flowing music created for “Shrimp” by Dutch freestyle composer Boy de Winter suited the delicate mare. Despite a few miscommunications, Tarjan produced a cleaner and more flowing test that earned her a score of 75.207%. “It’s a work in progress,” Tarjan said of the freestyle, “but she was super good, like she always is.” Being at the Final was “a great learning experience, getting to watch everyone else warm up,” she said.

Growing the Roots

Although the dressage podium was all European, strong US finishes and the addition of newer combinations promise exciting things for US dressage in the years ahead. Riders, organizers, and officials alike expressed gratitude for the support of Betsy Juliano, whose Havensafe Farm stepped up as the presenting sponsor of the 2023 FEI World Cup Dressage Final. Such top-level support bookends the community outreach we saw in Omaha, and our sport needs both to thrive.

Jennifer Bryant is the editor of USDF Connection.