With the prize giving ceremony of Sezuan and Dorothee Schneider the first edition of the Longines World Breeding Dressage Championships for Young Horses had a magnificent ending. Aat Both, chairman of the organising Foundation: We look back on a very successful first edition of the Longines World Breeding Dressage Championships for Young Horses in Ermelo. For four days we have enjoyed the best young dressage talents. We congratulated a dream of a champion of the five-year-olds and the two world champions of the previous edition both showed their progress and proved to be invincible once again. As a matter of fact, we saw a lot of quality across the entire field of participants.
“Verden” is a phenomenon, this competition has a fantastic reputation, so we realized that we brought quite a challenge upon ourselves. One we happily sunk our teeth in. We are very proud to have been the first to organize the championship for seven-year-old horses. Thanks to Longines and the Province of Gelderland we were able to organize a well-rounded event, during which we wanted to provide the riders and their horses with the best facilities and offer the visitors an attractive programme on a beautiful site with plenty supply of food, drinks, shopping and a vibrant atmosphere. We have received great comments from the participants, exhibitors, officials and visitors and we hope to welcome everyone back next year in Ermelo.
Project coordinator Joris Kemperman is also content with the event. “We, as the organization, are very satisfied. We can rely on our sponsors that agreed to supports us all three editions in Ermelo. Additionally, many enthusiastic entrepreneurs have expressed their interest for our exhibitor village. They also enabled us to provide the visitors with a wide range of beautiful products: from riding gear and jewelry to Dutch ‘poffertjes’ and smoothies.”
“Numerous participants showed interest in the classes for five- and six-year-olds: so much that there were no spots left to hand out the wildcards. Also the championship for seven-year-olds featured a large field of competitors. Compared to last year, we were able to double the prize money to a total sum of 50.000 euro. We also had the first World Breeding Dressage Championships for Young Horses at which Longines could award one of their magnificent watches to a dressage rider. But above all, we are extremely happy that people from all across the globe came to Ermelo to celebrate this first edition in the Netherlands. The whole terrain was filled with a buzzing crowd and the seated tickets for the main arena were sold out for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In total, we welcomed nearly 20.000 visitors from 27 different countries. We are satisfied about the event, although we still would like to implement some improvements for next year so we can offer the visitors even better facilities next edition. We hope that everyone enjoyed this Dutch version of the World Breeding Dressage Championships for Young Horses and that they will come back to Ermelo next year, then during the first weekend of August.
Jan Pedersen, president of the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses responded: “When it was decided to organise the World Breeding Dressage Championships for Young Horses in Ermelo, I was a bit sceptical. Verden has always been a great success and has been able to develop over many years. However, I must say this is rather fantastic. The whole venue looks impeccable and it is well-organised. I received solely positive reactions from both the riders and the audience. It is obvious that the organisation invested a lot to make this a grand success. Especially the main arena looks incredible and the horses also seem to like it, they are all very calm.”
“Every year I am impressed with the quality of the horses, it appears to improve each edition. Remarkable, because you would expect it to stop at a certain point. It proves that our breeding is still developing. This year we also saw absolutely fantastic horses, it is definitely more normal now to have horses scoring over 90%. Every year there are a few horses that stand out. In the five-year-old class the winning mare is truly something special, but also the 6- and 7-year-olds have a phenomenal top horses. By now we have established a strong connection between successful young horses at these championships and their future in the Grand Prix. I expect to see most of them back in the Grand Prix and lots in future Olympic Games.”
Next year’s Longines FEI/WBFSH World Breeding Dressage Championships for Young Horses in Ermelo takes place from the 3rd to the 6th of August.
(Photo Hippofoto Team)
