A SUPERB performance from Ireland’s Judy Reynolds, saw her equal the best-ever World Cup result for an Irish dressage rider, taking fifth place in the freestyle to music at the FEI World Cup show in Odense, Denmark last Sunday
Reynolds and the 13-year-old Jazz gelding Vancouver K, who is owned-by her parents Joe and Kathleen, produced an outstanding score of 74.425% and in fact the pair led the competition at the halfway mark.
The 33-year-old German-based Irish rider has been showing excellent form of late and has climbed up to 54th in the world rankings over the past year.
This was the first major show for Vancouver K since they narrowly missed out on Olympic qualification at the European Championships at Aachen in August.
However Reynolds remains determined to make the cut to Rio through any other possible route and has planned a consistent campaign of the World Cup series over the coming months.
Reynolds said she was disappointed with her 12th place finish in the Grand Prix at Odense last Saturday but was understandably delighted with her World Cup showing a day later: “The arena is very atmospheric and I was caught unawares when he backed off going into the corners [in Saturday’s Grand Prix]. I was much better prepared for that reaction in the World Cup,” she explained.
Previous highest
Ireland’s previous highest placing in a dressage World Cup qualifier was in 1996, when Heike Holstein and Ballaseyr Devereaux placed fifth at Wembley in England.
The winner’s trophy at Odense went to Dutch super-star Edward Gal with the stallion Glock’s Voice (78.000%) pinning the host country’s Anna Kasprzak and Donnperignon (77.100%) into runner-up spot and another Danish rider, Agnete Kirk Thinggaard and Jojo AZ (76.250%), into third.
Odense was hosting the opening leg of the 2015/2016 Reem Acra FEI World Cup dressage series, sponsored by Beirut-born New York fashion designer Reem Acra.
Riders from the Central Europe, North America and Asia/Pacific qualifiers will battle for a place at the World Cup final which will be staged in Gothenburg, Sweden next March.
Reynolds scored 12 points for her fifth place finish in Odense and she now plans to compete at the World Cup qualifier’s in Lyon, Salzburg and London’s Olympia between now and Christmas. Her Odense result comes on the back of a victory with Vancouver K in the Grand Prix at Gut Hohenkamp, in Germany the week before, where she pushed German rider Ingrid Klimke into second place.