European Junior and Young Rider Eventing Championships in Segersjö

From a German perspective, the dressage and cross-country events at the European Junior and Young Rider Eventing Championships in Segersjö, Sweden, could hardly have gone better. Both teams are in the lead, as are two riders from each team.

Junior

Division

Of the 57 pairs originally entered for the Junior European Championships (CH-EU-J-CCI2*-L), 52 finished the cross-country course, and 25 even did so within the time limit. The German U18 talents had already taken the lead yesterday after the dressage with 81 penalty points and added only a few more. They now have 84.8 penalty points—a lead of one jumping fault and a few time faults over the British team, which is on course for silver (89.6), and the Irish, currently in third place with exactly the same number of penalty points. However, since the three British team riders have the better total of individual placings, they are in second place ahead of the Irish.

Speaking of individual placings, the Germans’ record there is also quite impressive. Teresa Leowald leads the rankings at her first Junior European Championships, riding her Diacontinus son, DJ Continus. The pair had already taken the lead after the dressage with 25.8 penalty points and didn’t put a foot wrong in today’s cross-country.

Iliane Hannalisa Hein, the team’s second rider, also managed to defend her second-place position from the dressage round thanks to a faultless cross-country run. She is competing in Segersjö on her DSP gelding Akeby’s Quemiro Silla by Quaterback, who posted a dressage score of 26.1 penalty points yesterday.

Individual rider Lukas Wilhelm Sühling managed to hold on to a promising fourth-place position (27.5) on his nine-year-old Westphalian Allnightparty by À la Carte. Meanwhile, a pair from Ireland—Maeve Deverell riding Annaharvey Dunowen (26.8)—is on track for the bronze.

The second German pair, Jona Isabell Heine and Chantilly, finished with a dressage score of 31.7 penalty points (14th place).

The other two team riders, Pia Sophie Schreiber on Cliemann and Milla Staade on Christ William, are currently ranked 20th (32.9) and 40th (40.1), respectively.

Young Riders

The

Young Riders

are performing even better than the Juniors. Their dressage performance alone was fantastic: just 76.9 penalty points. And today on the cross-country course, all four showed that they’ve got what it takes for cross-country, with three of them even finishing without any additional penalty points.

Particularly noteworthy were the performances of Carl Voigt riding the nine-year-old Zweibrücken-bred son of Destacado, DSP Descansado, and Mathies Rüder riding his eight-year-old Swedish-bred son of Carambole, Hjoptimus. Both set personal bests in the arena, separated by just one-tenth of a point. Voigt received 23.6 penalty points, which he was able to defend today. Rüder’s score was 23.7. Here, too, both riders maintained a clean slate in the cross-country.

Currently in fourth place is Pita Schmid on her successful mare Favorita V. The 10-year-old Hanoverian mare by Nymphenburg’s First Ampere posted a dressage score of 29.6 penalty points. That initially put her in ninth place. But after today’s competition, they were able to move up to fourth place thanks to another top cross-country ride.

In the Young Riders category, a British pair is in line for the bronze medal with 25.6 penalty points: Elizabeth Barratt riding Ride for Thais Chaman Dumontceau. There is a tragic story behind this horse’s name. The 14-year-old gray was the great hope for the future of the talented French rider Thais Meheust. The 22-year-old dreamed of competing at the Olympics with this horse. In 2019, however, the two were involved in a terrible accident. Thais died. Her parents decided to make the gelding available to Stéphane Landois. He rode him for Thais at the Olympic Games in Paris and won silver there with the French team. Afterward, Chaman Dumontceau was sold to Barratt. But he has kept his name suffix.

The other German results

Back to Segersjö. In addition to the three pairs mentioned, Silva Kelly and Calypso are also competing for the team. After scoring 32.2 penalty points in dressage, they picked up another 18.4 time penalties in today’s cross-country, making them the team’s discard result at this time.

For individual rider Liv Hartmann and her OS mare La Diva, the competition has gone exceptionally well so far: 16th place after the dressage with 31.4 penalty points and 7th place after the cross-country with the same score.

The day didn’t go quite as well for Ella Krüger and her English Thoroughbred Königsblauer xx. After the dressage, the pair had been in a promising eighth place. Today in the cross-country, however, they ran into trouble at jump 17c, incurring 20 penalty points and a time penalty. As a result, they dropped to 35th place.

All the results from Segersjö are available here.