For dressage, everything really was bigger and better in Texas this week
Text and photographs by Jennifer O. Bryant
Texas-sized enthusiasm and a field of riders who embraced the welcoming, Western-themed venue and audience made for a notably upbeat Grand Prix Freestyle evening at the 2026 Zen Elite FEI Dressage World Cup Final at the Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas. The capstone of the dressage competition always features world-class sport, but it’s not too common to see riders smiling and laughing as they prepare to enter the arena.
(On Grand Prix night, it was someone’s shouted “We love your outfit!” that gave eventual victor Becky Moody of Great Britain on Jagerbomb a pre-test laugh; tonight, audience cries of “We love you, Julio!” to Julio Mendoza Loor on Jewel’s Goldstrike and “Go, Rocky!” to Christian Simonson on Indian Rock sparked the levity.)
As in the Grand Prix, the GP Freestyle proved to be a battle between Moody and Simonson for the top spot. With a freestyle that included (naturally) music from the Rocky movies and such fist-pumpers as Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” and James Brown’s “Living in America” (Simonson called the theme “a hero’s journey”), Simonson and “Rocky” led the leader board with a score of 83.810% until the very end. Their freestyle showcased Rocky’s lateral work and piaffe/passage, with one bobble—a buck after a rousing extended canter. Then Moody, last to go, blew that score out of the water with her 88.330% to a medley of Beatles and John Lennon classics that started out soulful (“Imagine”) and ended on a rousing chorus of “With a Little Help from My Friends.”
It was the first Dressage World Cup Final title for Moody, 46, who as a member of Team Great Britain won bronze at the 2024 Paris Olympics aboard her homebred 12-year-old KWPN gelding, Jagerbomb (Dante Weltino OLD x Jazz). The Englishwoman, who previously described “Bomb” as “not exceptional at anything but very good at everything,” said she relished the entire Texas experience.
“It was just insane to be part of such a cool competition,” Moody said afterward. “The crowd in there were absolutely something else.” She praised all of the horses, calling them “complete and utter diamonds.”
If Moody was filled with elation, Simonson clearly needs someone to pinch him so he’ll be sure he didn’t just dream his podium-worthy performances.
“This whole week has been a childhood dream come true,” said the 23-year-old, who was riding in his first Dressage World Cup Final aboard the 13-year-old KWPN stallion Indian Rock (Apache x Vivaldi) owned by 2026 Dressage World Cup Final title sponsor Zen Elite Equestrian Center. “At the end of my test, looking up and seeing this wall of people standing up, applauding Rocky—this was a moment I’ll never forget.”
Also looking a bit overwhelmed with the magnitude of the accomplishment and the enthusiasm of the crowd was Poland’s Sandra Sysojeva, 42, who finished third on 80.770% with the youngest horse in the competition, the 10-year-old Oldenburg mare Maxima Bella (Millennium x Christ). The pair placed seventh in last year’s Dressage World Cup Final and also competed at Paris 2024. Sysojeva reprised their Paris Olympic freestyle, which showcases Maxima Bella’s talent for piaffe and passage, set to lilting French music and a few 1950s-era standards like “Mr. Sandman”; for Fort Worth, she tacked on a coda in the form of a line from the Beyoncé Cowboy Carter song “Texas Hold ’em.”
“I’m really proud of her and I’m really proud to be here,” Sysojeva said afterward. “It’s my first time when I am in US, and I am really excited about the show.”
“It’s just been the most incredible experience,” Moody said. Texas has “just this incredible horse culture everywhere—a very, very different horse culture, but still, just the love of horses everywhere is insane. You really felt that in the arena tonight.”
Out of the 16 starters in the April 12 GP Freestyle, US competitors Kevin Kohmann and Benjamin Ebeling finished ninth and tenth, respectively. Kohmann rode his 2024 and 2025 Dressage World Cup Final partner, Diamante Farms’ 17-year-old Hanoverian gelding Duenensee (Dancier x Davignon), to a score of 76.730%. A native of Germany, Kohmann, 37, became a US citizen in 2021. Ebeling, 26, the son of US dressage Olympian Jan Ebeling and dressage rider Amy Ebeling, is a former FEI Young Rider who competed in the 2024 Dressage World Cup Final riding Indeed. At Fort Worth, he competed with Vantage Equestrian Group II LLC’s 16-year-old Hanoverian mare, Bellena (Belissimo x Welser), earning a score of 74.965% to a medley of Gwen Stefani pop songs including “The Sweet Escape” and “Rich Girl.”
