Cathrine Laudrup-Dufour and Freestyle win CDI4* Grand Prix in Hagen

Cathrine Laudrup-Dufour and Mount St. John Freestyle’s performance in the CDI4* Grand Prix for the Special von Hagen was in a league of its own, and not just in terms of marks. The mare represents a degree of permeability and collection that few pairs on the international stage can currently match. As a result, a Grand Prix hardly looks like work for her. The pair just seem to glide through the difficult movements (even if some of them are slightly awkward in the piaffe-passage-reprises). Cathrine Laudrup-Dufour knows how to emphasize every point. From the salutations to the halt and backwards to the reinforcements ridden from point to point and the supple zig-zag traversals. Marietta Almasy gave the pair a 9.5 for overall impression and harmony. Their colleagues scored 9.0, and rightly so. 82.391 percent overall, not the pair’s personal best result, but that was not what they were aiming for, Laudrup-Dufour later reported.

“My plan was never to go to the limit and risk anything. I just wanted to get a good feeling at my first outdoor tournament,” said Laudrup-Dufour. She had that today. “I have to say I am very, very happy. She was really nice to ride today.” And this despite the fact that the mare was still “like a dragon” when she arrived in Hagen. Hard to believe when you’ve seen the ride today. “I realized that it’s okay for her to be like a dragon when she arrives at a show,” said the world number one. “That means she’s happy and fit.” At the same time, the mare, now 17 years old, also knows exactly when it matters. “She was really focused this morning. I only rode her for 15 or 20 minutes, walked her a bit and then just loosened her up.” She is all the happier about the result. “I’m really proud of the points, because I had only pressed the gas pedal halfway.”

Instead, she used the test today to try out a few new things. Instead of her trusted trainer, Kyra Kyrklund, her husband Richard White is with her in Hagen. He gave her small but valuable tips, reported Laudrup-Dufour, for example on the single changes. “He told me that I had to have the image of riding a wave in my head. I had already made mistakes here at the last tournaments. So I kept her a bit more collected in the introduction.”

She can try out what else he has given her in the Grand Prix Special on Sunday, which will take place in the large stadium. It will be the pair’s first since they rode to silver at the European Championships in Crozet.

Anyone looking forward to a meeting between Freestyle and Viva Gold and Isabell Werth was disappointed. Werth had changed her mind and will only compete the Louisdor Prize winner in Mannheim, as national trainer Monica Theodorescu reported.

Vayron with personal best

This was also Ingrid Klimke and Vayron’s first outdoor start today, their second competition of the season after the Grand Prix Special in Lier, where the Westphalian stallion had a tongue lashing and nothing worked. There was a world of difference between that day and today’s performance in Hagen.

The 15-year-old Vitalis son presented himself more stable in his body and more content in his contact today, even though there were still sequences in which one would have liked to see the nose more clearly in front of the vertical, for example in the extensions, which he presented with really impressive impulsion, but where one would have liked to see more extension of the frame (scores of 7.5 to 9 in trot).

The piaffe and passage are stable, diligent and with secure transitions, the latter hardly swaying at all. In the piaffe, the forehand still “sticks” to the ground a little, despite clearly taking the weight with the hindquarters. The two-stride changes were straight as a die and securely jumped through and the one-stride changes also worked well.

Zig-zag traverses and pirouettes are among the challenges of a special kind for the giant with the giant transmission. But the pair seem to have come to terms with this too. Although the latter were still more of a jump than a lift, at least they were balanced and in sync.

A small misunderstanding when picking up from a strong canter led to a botched change. “I should have ridden back to the changeover. There was one hitch,” Klimke explained later. But that was the only real “mistake” in the test.

The final score was 75.087 percent, a new personal best for the European team champions – as a pair. Vayron had already achieved Grand Prix results of more than 76 percent under his previous rider Daniel Bachmann Andersen, with whom he had won team bronze at the 2023 European Championships and team silver at the 2024 Olympic Games for Denmark.

Ingrid Klimke was happy. “Today he was totally relaxed right from the start. He came here and felt comfortable from day one. I think we are slowly but surely making a good connection.” Klimke says that the personable Vayron needs that. “He really is extremely sensitive. But when I have him with me like today, everything is fine. Then he doesn’t sweat and there are no ghosts, neither the stripes on the hoof nor the letters.”

She has learned her lessons from the incident in Lier. “I changed the curb bit. He didn’t feel so comfortable with it. Now he has one with a shorter bit. And after Crozet (the European Championships, the pair’s last competition in 2025, editor’s note), I made the mistake of taking a very long break. I just dawdled around a lot and only rode in a snaffle. Then I only rode two or three times on a double bridle before Lier. I simply should have done that more.”

She now takes the curb bit out of the cupboard more often again. Not only for dressage work, but also when she rides him in the open country. This is part of the standard program for the ground-shy giant anyway, says Klimke. “He takes every puddle in his stride!” And so that he himself believes that he can “march through the world big and strong”, as Klimke says, he has a new nickname. “He’s now called Löwenherz and no longer Hasenherz.”

Ingrid Klimke will know what that can do. After all, she was part of the 2008 Olympic eventing team that had a photo in their pocket on the way to Olympic gold in Hong Kong, in which a standard pussycat looks into a mirror from which a lion looks back.

Third place to the Gothenburg winners

Third place went to the pair who had won the World Cup freestyle in Gothenburg, Maria von Essen from Sweden on her Jazz son Invoice, who is registered in Oldenburg but is Dutch up to the sixth generation and bred from a Trakehner dam line. The black stallion was also particularly convincing today in the collected lessons and scored 73.370 percent.

Who else stood out

Fourth place went to Leonie Richter and the ten-year-old Rhineland stallion Lord Europe with a personal best of 72.261 percent. The Lord Leatherdale son presented himself much better today in the piaffe and more stable in canter in the three-beat than was seen of him in the Louisdor Prize Final in Frankfurt, for example.

The Swedish Olympic rider Therese Nilshagen had brought her Grand Prix winner from Tolbert with her to Hagen, the Hanoverian stallion Navarro. The black horse with the powerful stallion neck had some good moments, for example in the passage before the transition to the strong walk, where he went under the center of gravity and energetically pushed off the ground. Or the dead straight two-up changes. Or the successful pirouettes. On the other hand, there was, for example, a backwards movement with resistance and zig-zag traversals, in which Nilshagen had a lot to do in the saddle. They finished sixth with 72.065 percent.

If there had been a special prize for the Happy Athlete, Tobias Nabben’s Forster would have been a candidate. The dainty black horse always has his ears forward and if he does turn them backwards in an uncertain questioning manner, a tap on his rider’s neck is enough to convince him that all is well. The special history of the two has welded them together. But the gelding not only scores with his attitude to work and his good contact, but also with his suppleness, beautifully worked out reinforcement and extremely relaxed and diligent piaffe-passage work. On the other hand, there were some avoidable mistakes today, such as a salute position in which Forster rested on the right rear, open halt, backwards with resistance, somewhat unclean zig-zag traversals, loss of rhythm in the left pirouette and an unclean transition from canter to trot. Result: 69.174 percent and twelfth place out of the 16 pairs, but with plenty of room for improvement.

You can find all the results here.