Lara de Liedekerke-Meier and last year's world champion Tara van het Leliehof are leading the way at the World Championships for young eventing horses

The field of seven-year-olds at the World Championships for Young Eventing Horses in Lion d’Angers is so large that the dressage competition will take place over two days. The six-year-olds will compete tomorrow.

Tara & Lara Lead the Pack

Among the first group of seven-year-olds allowed onto the World Championship dance floor today was defending champion Tara van het Leliehof, partnered with Belgium’s Lara de Liedekerke-Meier. It’s safe to say that Tara and Lara lived up to expectations. The Belgian Pegase van’t Ruytershof daughter has taken the lead in the interim standings with 28.6 penalty points (71.4 percent).

To put this in perspective: At the CCI3* level, this is her second-best result to date. The mare, who was last year’s world champion among six-year-olds, competed in five events this year—two CCI2* events, both of which she won, and three three-star CCI events, where she placed second twice and sixth once.

Leuwer’s Alf PH Sets Personal Best

The German duo of Ben Leuwer and Alf PH also had every reason to celebrate. With 30.3 penalty points, the trainer from Rodderberg and his Hanoverian son of Alaba—bred by Katrin Ackermans-Voelkel—are currently in third place. This is their best three-star dressage result to date.

The 2022 British world champion, Yasmin Ingham, managed to squeeze in between the leading Belgian riders and Leuwer, presenting another offspring of the top eventing sire Diarado with the British sport horse Club Class. The pair finished just shy of the 30-penalty-point threshold: 29.9.

The other German results

Anna Siemer and her Estonian Trakehner mare Eliope by Chromas also took the arena today. Their best result in the CCI3* arena was 31.9 penalty points. They were unable to match that today. The mare had rhythm errors in the trot, found one or two spots in the arena a bit intimidating, and ended up with 35.8 penalty points. That currently puts her in 22nd place.

It wasn’t the best day for Jule Wewer and the Diarado daughter Deena, bred by Stefan Aust. The mare, who is actually very powerful in her movements and possesses a hind-quarter drive that suggests she has the strength to overcome any obstacle in her path—whether in cross-country or over jumps—seemed very tense today. Wewer was as gentle as possible with her hands, but Deena seemed very uncomfortable in contact, couldn’t find her suppleness, and so the mistakes piled up. In the end, the scoreboard showed 43 penalty points and 57 percent. Unfortunately, that means last place for the pair for now.

Preview

: The competition continues tomorrow morning at 8:45 a.m. with the six-year-olds. Three German pairs will be competing: Sven Lux with the Trakehner stallion Berlioz at 10:12 a.m., Andreas Dibowski and Codero at 11:21 a.m., and Ann-Catrin Bierlein with ACSI Daisy Dynamite at 12:18 p.m.

The second half of the Seven-Year-Olds class will be opened at 3:00 p.m. by the German Amateur Champions, attorney Caro Hoffrichter and her home-bred horse Archie CC. Christin Schulz and Heho Dennis will enter the arena at 3:30 p.m.

You can learn more about the history of German horses here.

All start and result lists can be found here.