You can’t win the warmup, but you can lose in the warmup. Go backstage and see how some of the FEI Dressage World Cup Final riders warm up for their Grand Prix tests.
Text and photos by Jennifer O. Bryant
If you’ve competed in dressage, you know that the warmup ring is basically a snake pit of nervous and distracted riders, nervous and distracted horses, coaches calling out from the sidelines, and assorted anxious railbirds.
The warmup at your average dressage show, that is. At the elite levels, it’s quite a different picture: calm and focused riders (outwardly, anyway), methodically executing the warmup plans that they have developed over months or years to best prepare their mounts to give a peak performance precisely when the judge rings the bell.
No time is wasted in an elite rider’s warmup. There is a pattern and a flow to the sequence of exercises—no mindless tooling around.
We spend a lot of time planning how to ride our tests—but typically not much on how to best warm up our horses before those tests. Is your horse slow to get his hind legs in gear? Quick out of the gate, with the tendency to “run” on the forehand? Short and laterally stiff? Long-backed and wiggly as an eel? Each of these types requires a different warmup strategy.
With all of this in mind, tonight I decided to take you through the back door at the 2026 FEI Dressage World Cup Final in Fort Worth, Texas—not just ringside for the Grand Prix, but also ringside at the warmup ring, to see how it’s done at the highest level in our sport.
Timing Is Everything
Most of the dressage competitors in Fort Worth did not spend untoward amounts of time in warmup. US-based Ecuadorian rider Julio Mendoza Loor, for example, strolled into the warmup ring aboard Jewel’s Goldstrike at 6:25 p.m. local time ahead of his 7:01 p.m. ride time. Five-time Dressage World Cup Final veteran pair Morgan Barbançon and the 20-year-old Sir Donnerhall II OLD of France know the drill so well that Barbançon needed only 22 minutes to warm up—consisting of lots of walking around the perimeter, followed by some collected work and piaffe-passage transitions, and then it was straight into the competition arena. The Shortest Warmup award went to the USA’s Benjamin Ebeling and Bellena, who clocked a mere 13 pre-ride minutes.
After his Grand Prix test, Ebeling explained his methodology:
“We kind of have a three-week process [in the lead-up to a competition],” he said. “The first week, we work a lot on throughness. The second week, we work a little bit more on movements. And then the third week is kind of combining everything a little bit, putting together the combinations of the movements that are in the test. And we’ve developed a really great warmup routine with her when she gets to the shows. A couple of hours before [the test], we do all of our exercises and we get a nice workout; then, prior to the class, she does just a little bit of walk-trot-canter, a couple of transitions, a little bit of basics work, just honing the basics. And then we go in.”
Warmup Strategy
US competitor Kevin Kohmann, who finished ninth in the Grand Prix aboard Duenensee, was like most of his fellow competitors in that he included a few test movements in his warmup, such as the center line with canter pirouettes and the center line with halt (many riders extended the period of immobility for schooling purposes) and salute. Several, including Grand Prix winner Becky Moody of Great Britain on Jagerbomb, practiced the halt and rein back several times, dialing in on the squareness of the halt, the diagonal pairs of legs stepping uniformly backward for the requisite five steps, and the prompt and balanced move-off into trot.
Mendoza Loor’s warmup featured lots of suppling work, beginning in walk with steep half-passes and transitions between shoulder-in and renvers. He then took “Goldie” straight into canter—trot came afterward—in a relaxed, forward canter in a half-seat before bringing the gelding into more collection for counter-canter work, including with a lot of inside flexion and then school canter on a straight line. After running through the two- and one-tempis, the piaffe/passage, and the pirouettes, Goldie got another walk break and then Mendoza Loor rode rising trot alternating between a collected outline and a bit of a half-stretch (quarter-stretch?) three minutes before he headed to the competition arena, where he finished fourth with a score of 72.000%.
The Freestyle Match Shapes Up
I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at how top riders structure their warmups to bring out the best in their horses. As you can see, warmups are individualized to each horse, and some trial and error is typically involved to find the strategy that works best.
Now we eagerly look forward to Saturday evening’s freestyle final, with these top finishers from the Grand Prix sure to be in the medal hunt:
Grand Prix results
1. Becky Moody/Jagerbomb (GBR) (76.761%)
2. Christian Simonson/Indian Rock (USA) (75.413%)
3. Patrik Kittel/Touchdown (SWE) (72.869%)
9. Kevin Kohmann/Duenensee (USA) (68.674%)
13. Benjamin Ebeling/Bellena (USA) (67.717%).
