It’s fun to see fresh faces at the top of U.S. dressage classes.
For a long time, the USA’s familiar names have been leading competition in America and elsewhere, but now there’s a changing of the guard, so to speak. A perennial team member, the much-decorated Steffen Peters, is still competing on the West Coast with his longtime partner, Suppenkasper and pointing for the 2024 Paris Olympics. But such well-known riders as Kasey Perry-Glass and Adrienne Lyle, both of whom earned Olympic and World Championships medals, are among those working with new horses this winter.
What’s really interesting is that two of this month’s big winners who are just taking their place on the stage have a real connection.
Anna Marek, the individual bronze medalist at the 2023 Pan American Games on Fire Fly, won the Grand Prix with a 72.826 percent personal best score and the Freestyle with another personal best of 78.457 on the 14-year-old Fayvel at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival earlier in February. She went on to take the top prize in the Grand Prix for the Special with 70.369 percent at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala over this past weekend.
Anna Marek and Fayvel. (Photo © 2024 by Nancy Jaffer)
Anna keeps approximately 30 of the horses she trains on the premises of Crown View Dressage, the Ocala farm of Jessica Howington. At WEC, the Special itself went to Jessica on her new horse, Serenade MF, with a mark of 68.915 percent in only their second show together, while Anna was right behind her on Fayvel with a 68.277.
Although WEC was just the second show and the first CDI for Jessica with Shrimp, as her mare is known around the barn, it was hardly the first time she and Anna have been in the same competitions. And there are never any hard feelings, no matter who gets the top prize.
“I love Anna. We’re super-friendly,” said Jessica, who was second in the Grand Prix for the Special with 68.152 percent.
“We have competed against each other now for a long time and I think we’ve won and lost against each other so many times, there’s nothing awkward at all.”
Jessica added, “It’s funny, because even though she trains here on the farm, we are so incredibly busy, I almost never see her.” That’s except if they are warming up for the same class, of course.
Although the bulk of the horses with which Anna is involved are at Jessica’s farm, Fayvel and Fire Fly live on Anna’s own 20-acre property in Dunnellon, outside Ocala.
Anna made headlines at the Pan Am Games, where she was a member of the U.S. gold medal team and faced a real challenge “because it was the first major stage I’d ever been on,” she said.
She and Fire Fly “made our way up very quickly,” she noted, saying there weren’t too many expectations for them coming into the Pan American Games year.
“We just kept getting better and better,” said the mother of two, who relies on family for help with her children as she balances her riding with taking care of the youngsters.
Fayvel used to be ridden primarily by his owner, Christina Davila, who imported the Dutchbred gelding as a seven-year-old sales horse, but decided to keep him after realizing he was everything she wanted. However, when she hurt her neck in a non-horse related accident, she suggested to Anna, “Why don’t you show him and see what happens?”
What happened is that she has qualified for the FEI World Cup Finals, to be held this spring in Saudi Arabia. She’s also hoping to be named to the group that will gain experience on a European tour before the Paris Olympics. Anna has never competed in Europe, and who knows what will happen in that regard?
“Olympics or not, it’s a perfect opportunity,” she said.
For Jessica, doing a CDI as her second show with Shrimp was a bit of a risk. Despite the fact that she started riding the mare only at the end of December, less than two months ago, the two have meshed.
Jessica Howington and Serenade MF (Photo © Andrew Ryback 2024)
“I feel like every single day, we click more and more, she becomes more my horse and my ride,” said Jessica, who works as a nurse practitioner in addition to training horses.
“I feel like especially over the last two weeks, our relationship has really improved. I was over the moon happy,” Jessica commented about her victory.
“She’s such a special horse, I really love her.”
At the same time, she pointed out, “It’s not easy taking on someone else’s horse who has been trained to Grand Prix. It doesn’t matter how amazing the previous rider or trainer was, it’s just styles are different.”
So not everything has been perfect in getting to know Shrimp, who was trained by Alice Tarjan.
Although the first time Jessica sat on Shrimp, when she knew immediately the mare was her kind of ride, “it took me four weeks at least, maybe five weeks, of having her before I could get the one-tempis on her. So many different things in dressage–movements are so personal. That was one of the things we really struggled with. With horses, it’s always a roller-coaster.”
Nothing comes quickly in the discipline, no matter how perfect a partnership has the potential to be. So it was exciting when things came together in the Special.
“Even though we had a couple of bobbles, Shrimp really let me ride her and I was able to learn so much about her,” Jessica pointed out.
“Now I know where there are moments I can push her. I want to get the extended trot bigger and the piaffes more on the spot. I’m really hopeful for the future and and looking forward to continuing building the relationship with her. She’s so awesome,” Jessica said of the 11-year-old Hanoverian mare, who was bred in America by Maryanna Haymon.
Shrimp “gets very fired-up and very nervous at shows, so sometimes, that turns into her being really fiery, and other times, it turns and almost makes her shut down. I have to figure out what’s going to be best for her and how I need to ride her in those moments.”
While she would be “thrilled and completely honored” to be selected for a trip to Europe, Jessica commented, “I think I definitely would have to get a few more really good and improved scores under my belt, but I would not turn down that opportunity.”