Those Summer Days of dressage in Gladstone

“It’s always so hot for this show,” I heard a rider say as she walked her horse toward the ring during the Summer Days dressage show at the U.S. Equestrian Team Foundation in Gladstone yesterday.

Well yes, because it’s summer in New Jersey. Now if it were called Autumn Days, that would be a different matter.

“This doesn’t feel super, super hot to me,” said Technical Delegate Andrea Davenport, citing a “nice breeze,” but she admitted, “I might be a little bit biased because I live in Mississippi.”

It was impressive to see how riders and their mounts coped with temperatures that started in the low 80s and went into the 90s as things progressed at the two-day competition, presented by the Eastern States Dressage and Combined Training Association. There were a lot of faces glowing with both perspiration and smiles as competitors rode in the historic arena.

Even as temperatures soared, “The wonderful thing about this show is that there is so much history here that people still want to participate. We all strive to be at a place like this,” said show manager Lisa Toaldo, a dentist who is a former ESDCTA president.

“It’s one of my favorite shows to run. I love supporting the USET Foundation.” Lisa emphasized.

At the same time, she noted how grateful she is for all the volunteers. The show couldn’t run “if it wasn’t for them out here in the heat, taking time away from their own schedules.” In return, they get gas money, food and little souvenirs, such as an ESDCTA pin.

Summer Days is becoming a tradition on many calendars.

“We come every year. We love it. The footing is nice, the people are so friendly, It’s an honor, these are prestigious grounds with lots of history,” said trainer Kathryn Mills of Lucky Shoe Farm in Hellertown, Pa.

She had done a lovely running braid job on the neck of Bugatti, an unregistered Friesian who she suspects may have some Dutch harness horse in his ancestry.

After finding him as a completely untrained five-year-old, Kathryn handed him to her assistant, Emily Shewell, saying “Here’s your project. See what you can do with him. Five years later, he’s showing Fourth Level and doing some Prix St. Georges work. They’re planning on going to Dressage at Devon this fall.

Bugatti, who earned 66.795 percent in Fourth Level Test 1, “is a giant teddy bear,” according to Emily, who says, ““He loves every person, every horse, every dog. He’s a sweetheart.”

Summer Days usually is held in July, when one suspects it could have been even warmer this year, but it was moved into June because the Olympic dressage, para-dressage and eventing horses were to quarantine in July at the Foundation stables before heading to Tokyo. That didn’t happen at nearly the last minute due to the lack of suitable flights to get the horses to Japan from the U.S. (they are quarantining in Germany instead) but the show went ahead with the new date.

With the heat, jackets were optional and there were some scratches, yet even so, the show wrapped up into the late afternoon as scheduled. Some classes were a competition among a group of horses, with as many as six entries. Others had only one entry, perhaps someone who wanted a judge’s opinion on the progress of their horse, or was using the show as a qualifier for the GAIG/USDF  Regional Championships or the 2021 Col.Bengt Ljungquist Memorial Championship.

Alice Tarjan of Oldwick was looking to qualify for Regionals on Serenade, who earned 75.217 percent in the Grand Prix. The 8-year-old Hanoverian mare won the Lövsta Future Challenge Grand Prix in Florida this year and was the national 4-year-old champion early in her career. The American-bred Serenade was purchased as a foal from Maryanna Haymon in North Carolina; Alice has an eye for spotting equine talent in the youngsters..

Serenade is so graceful in the arena. Alice agreed with me that if Serenade were a person, she would be participating in ballroom dance competition.

Last month, Alice finished sixth in the mandatory observation trial for the Olympics. Her ride for that competition, Candescent, is back in work after a break, but she hasn’t been in enough classes this year to qualify for the U.S. Equestrian Federation Festival of Champions national championships at Lamplight in Illinois next month. Alice is hoping she’ll get a wild card nomination for the competition.,

It’s always fun to see what exhibitors will come up with for their musical freestyles, and I had a feeling what Kim Herslow would do with the Lusitano Elvis HI in the Intermediate I to music. Can you guess? You’re right, it was a compendium of  Presley’s hits.The best part comes at the end, with the announcement that “Elvis has left the building.”

That phrase often was used by announcers at the conclusion of Elvis’ concerts in order to disperse audiences hoping in vain for one more encore. The freestyle was put together by Boy de Winter of Music-Motions in the Netherlands, a musician Kim is bringing to her Upper Creek Farm in Stockton this September for a symposium with Linda Zang..

Kim has been working with Elvis for four years and advises, “He definitely wants to be a player. We’re having fun out there.” She got a good score of 71.600 percent and is looking toward Lamplight and Dressage at Devon, as well as returning to Florida in 2022 for the first time in two years. After Devon, she wants to focus on moving up to the I-2 and the Grand Prix, “all in the right timing for him.”

As a Lusitano, he is a different ride than a warmblood, Kim pointed out.

“You have to understand how to balance them correctly. That’s the challenge with them because they’re so willing to do however you ride them and there’s a lot of movement. It took me awhile to learn with this horse,” said Kim, who has been riding him for four years and focusing on teaching him to use his core and back more without bracing his neck.

The array of breeds at Summer Days made me realize once again how any type of horse can adapt to and benefit from dressage. A case in point is Solasta, an off-the-track thoroughbred who got a very credible 69.583 percent in First Level Test 3 with owner Krysia Potter of nearby Lebanon. She got the 11-year-old for $2,500 when he was five, after.the Storm Cat grandson raced 42 times and earned $100,000.

Kryisa is the daughter of Pam Potter, a well-known New Jersey jumper rider from a few decades back. An amateur who sells insurance for a living, Krysia. says she’s primarily a hunter/jumper rider who is her own trainer. Solasta does all that (and eventing too), but for her side-trip into dressage, Krysia works with trainer Carolyn Laurent.

Of Solasta, to whom she has promised that he will never be sold, she said about his time in dressage, “He prefers to jump. But this is great for our jumping and it helps build everything else we need in between the fences.”

Krysia is going for a U.S. Dressage Federation bronze medal and would like to end the year at 1.15-1.20 meters in the jumping.

Fontenay, a Hanoverian by Furst Jazz, impressed the judges enough in the USEF Four-Year-Old test to earn a whopping mark of 86.2 percent, a big improvement over his still very respectable score of 71.300 they day before when he seemed a bit overimpressed by his surroundings.That was understandable, considering it was his first time being ridden at a show.

The youngster is owned by trainer Cesar Parra,  but he handed the reins over to his senior trainer, Katryna Evans, because at 58, he understandably doesn’t want to be sitting on youngsters.

“I’m getting too old to come off,” he laughed.

“I think this is the best horse I have had in my life so far. This is like the horse with a dream, the best I could find in the world last year.”

Cesar, a Pan American Games and Olympic veteran based in Readington, said the horse earned 9s in the walk and trot and 8.9 in the canter. He came to the U.S. just three weeks ago, but Cesar is hoping to take him to Lamplight “if he’s up to it.”

Four years ago, Cesar made a commitment to having Americans work for him. Katryna, a native of Colorado, spent six years in Germany and got a degree from Warendorf. “She rides like a German,” said Cesar.

For Summer Days results from day one, click here

For day two, click on this link

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