San Juan Capistrano, CA – April 5, 2016 – Steffen Peters scored double big tour victories during another dominating week at California Dreaming Productions’ Festival of the Horse CDI3* with Four Winds Farm’s Rosamunde (Rosie). The competition was held March 31-April 2, and many riders used the opportunity to gear up for the summer season.
Peters laid out a solid performance in Friday’s Grand Prix, earning a 74.120 percent. He continued his momentum on Saturday, debuting a new freestyle with Rosie, a 9-year-old Rheinlander mare. The new freestyle proved to be a winner, with Peters successfully piloting the mare to a 76.243 percent.
“For the first time out, I was pleased,” Peters said after his second win. “We’ll continue to tweak and polish it a little bit, and after we do it a few more times we’ll both get more used to it. It’s quite a difficult freestyle, but it’s something she and I can continue to grow into.”
With a couple of mistakes in the one-tempis, Peters and Rosie have room to up their scores for the new choreography. Music selections included Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” for the piaffe-passage tours.
“There were so many good things too, including beautiful pirouettes and a nice relaxed walk and good halts,” Peters said. “Those little things can be easily overlooked and be deceptively difficult for a sensitive young horse like her.”
Peters looks to Rosie as the successor to his current competition horse Legolas 92 and previous champion Ravel, and this complicated freestyle is the next step in her development. He hopes to continue to help the young mare grow and progress with Olympic success as the end goal.
“It’s such a long road with this freestyle because we’ve produced so many good ones, making it a challenge to come up with another one that is of the same quality,” Peters explained. “I look at it like a movie sequel – it’s very hard to top the first one.”
He continued, “I believe that if you want to compete at the top level, you have to continue to better yourself. So yes, it’s a very difficult freestyle, but now is the time for Rosie to begin to ‘step up’ and be able to produce an Olympic-quality performance.”
Australia’s Emma Weinert O’Rourke rode her Dutch Warmblood mare to their very first CDI victory in the Grand Prix Special. In the pair’s second large tour performance, they built on their previous international score earning an impressive 67.294 percent over seasoned competitors.
Shayna Simon and her 11-year-old Hanoverian gelding Harley Davidson earned a 71.45 percent in the Intermediaire I Freestyle. They just beat out Jan Ebeling with Ann Romney’s Hanoverian gelding Bakari.
In Friday’s Young Rider Team test, Lauren Asher and her Hanoverian gelding De Noir 3 continued to find success scoring a 68.553 percent. In Saturday’s Individual test the pair just got beat for first place, but earned a red ribbon with a 66.421 percent. The team rounded out the weekend with a final performance in the Young Rider Freestyle with another top score of 66.375 percent. After a successful season the pair have moved closer to securing a spot on the Region 7 Team for the North American Young Rider Championships this summer.
