Matthias Bouten with F-Type OLD to victory in the Stars von Morgen warm-up competition

Matthias Bouten and F-Type OLD were the last of the 17 pairs to enter the arena in the warm-up test for the Stars of Tomorrow qualifier in Balve. The impressive Franziskus son is already twelve years old. However, according to the announcement, eleven to twelve-year-old horses without Grand Prix, Special, Freestyle or Short Grand Prix placings in first to fifth place in the qualifying period may also take part in the competition. F-Type OLD has been owned since his youth by the former European Young Rider Champion Johanne Pauline on Danwitz, who initially trained him together with Rhineland-based Warwick McLean and later with Heiner Schiergen up to Grand Prix level and presented him herself. She rode him twice at the Bundeschampionat in Warendorf, and as a five-year-old they advanced to the final. Since this year, Isabell Werth’s former stable rider Matthias Bouten has been in the saddle. Balve is their fourth show together.

F-Type OLD fills the arena with his presence, an imposing horse that today, for example, showed highlights in the traversal shifts in trot and the series changes in canter. The first passage-piaffe-passage transitions were still blurred and not very accentuated. The second ones were better. In the second piaffe in particular, the gelding showed a secure beat and a lowered croup, albeit still with a clear forward tendency. The pirouette to the left was quite balanced and active, in the second the gelding lost impulsion and activity.

Unfortunately, the mouth was always a bit open. The pair scored 70.869 percent.

Matthias Bouten: “Very happy with the result”

Boute told EQUI PAGES that he has been riding “Freddy” for a good three months. Johanne Pauline von Danwitz, the owner, has the same stables as him and his partner Vicent Arroyo. It was therefore only natural that he should help her with the further training of F-Type OLD.

“She hasn’t worked with Heiner Schiergen for some time. We are continuing to build up the horse together. It’s a lot of fun and works well. We got on well together right from the start.” Now it’s a matter of gaining further security together.

“I think the test was quite good overall. The piaffe-passage could of course be a bit more powerful and the transitions even more secure, the pirouettes more centered. But I think overall – great traversals, nice changes … we are really happy and on the right track and are delighted with the result.”

Louisdor finalists in second place

Dr. Annabel Frenzen and the ten-year-old Szechuan, who is also Oldenburg-registered, know their way around second place. At the first Louisdor Prize qualifier of the season in Hagen, they finished second to secure their ticket to the final in Frankfurt at the first attempt. And the Sezuan son, who Frenzen introduced to the higher ranks of dressage herself, also came second today, this time with 70.368 percent.

The black horse already showed himself to be solid in the Grand Prix lessons, but his open mouth was also a downer.

Richi Vogel’s United Touch can also do dressage

Wrong place? Wrong horse? That’s what you might think when you look at Niklas Brokamp’s Unikat B from the family’s own breeding program. The ten-year-old Westphalian is a son of Richard Vogel’s Aachen winner United Touch S out of a Raphael dam. The gelding was able to bring some of the power promised by his pedigree into the arena today. He still lacks security and balance in piaffe and passage, but the bay showed promising signs. He lost activity and impulsion in the right pirouette, which is correspondingly expensive in double-counting lessons. But all in all it was a very harmonious round ridden with a fine hand, which was rewarded with 69.421 percent.

Serious – it’s getting serious and other winners

Up until the canter, it looked as if the highly elegant San Amour son Serious (also an Oldenburg) and Friederike Tebbel could win this test. The black bay moves wonderfully light-footed and elastic in trot – which he also knows how to carry into piaffe and passage. Then came the canter. When he was asked to change in medium canter on the diagonal at X, Serious was no longer quite so serious. His reaction to his rider’s help was an energetic bucking jump, which was penalized by the judges with marks between 4 and 6. Further mistakes followed. Too bad! Fourth place today with 69.132 percent.

Performance Werth and Be Sure

Isabell Werth’s performance on the former Bundeschampion Be Sure was eagerly awaited. The Benicio son is only eight and belongs to Werth’s business partner Helgstrand Dressage. Leonie Richter has trained him so far and presented him last year in the Nuremberg Burg Cup Final, for which he qualified here in Balve. He went into his second test with Werth today. Last weekend was the dress rehearsal at a regional show in Düsseldorf, where they were victorious with 74.690 percent. It wasn’t that much today.

Be Sure is a moving horse full of willingness to perform and eagerness to work. Werth gave him a lot of freedom in the contact so as not to disturb him. Unfortunately, however, the stallion’s movements did not really go through the body in any of the three basic gaits and lacked any real balance. In trot he floated, in walk he stomped and in canter he climbed. The judges gave him a 6.5 for M (Katrina Wüst), an 8 for E (Knut Danzberg) and otherwise a 7.0 (Pascal Strohbücker for H, Tina Viehbahn for C, Thomas Kessler for B) in the footnote for “purity of gaits, independence and regularity”.

Danzberg scored a 7 for the area of permeability, where there were also clear problems with the single changes, while his colleague opposite scored a 6 and all the others a 6.5. The overall score was still 68.869 percent.

You can find all the results of the stars of tomorrow here.