She did it again, and again.
The day after taking first and second place in the Grand Prix at the U.S. Dressage Festival of Champions with her mares Candescent and Donatella M, Alice Tarjan was first and second in the Intermediaire II for the Developing Grand Prix Championship with another mare, Serenade MF (75.048 percent) and a stallion, Harvest (72.597). Then she was first and second in the Grand Prix Special, with Donatella (71.978 percent) and Candescent (71.765) changing places for this one.
Alice competing on Serenade earlier this summer at the U.S. Equestrian Team Foundation. (Photo © 2021 by Nancy Jaffer)
The Oldwick resident, who brought nine horses to the Festival at Lamplight Farm in Illinois, was sixth in the final U.S. Olympic trial last spring.
Discussing Serenade, Alice said, “She’s so funny; you walk up here and you feel like a little kid on this pony
“She wants to be a children’s hunter, and I wonder how I get her through a Grand Prix! We’re warming up with all of these horses with a great, big presence, and there is ‘Shrimp.’
“Man, that horse knows her job though, she fills herself up and off she goes. She put in a really clean test for what she is capable of, so I was thrilled. She’s a neat little horse.”
Harvest, a year older than Serenade, has a different story.
“The quality is very good, but it just needs more time to develop. He is a little spooky and less secure, and, for sure, bigger and (more) powerful. It takes me longer to fix it on him than on Shrimp. Shrimp kind of trained like a dog, and Harvest trained fine, but it’s just a little green. It’s just a matter of getting it consistent in the ring.”
Alice called the championship, “a fantastic show, and I think that it’s exactly what they need. Because Harvest can be a little spooky, I think he just needed to go at it a little bit, and be able to settle in the arena. The self-carriage on all of these horses is good, but it’s one thing to do it well at home and then you can go to a show and it all falls apart. It keeps you honest about where the horses are in their training.”
Alice was pleased with the way Donatella performed in the Special.
“She really tried for me in the ones, and there were a couple moments where I was like ‘I don’t know if we’re going to be able to hold it’ and ride her through, but she knew her job. It’s a little like in jumping when you miss a distance and a horse carries you over the fence anyway; it was really nice of her.”
Candescent had a few mistakes today in the two tempis and a pirouette, but yesterday, she was marked in the Grand Prix at 73.673 percent) and Donatella at 71.782.
“Both of the tests were clean,” said Alice. “We basically got all of the movements, and that was a good thing that we could come out and get a clean test.”
“These are drastically different horses. They are both very honest, but Candescent was not so easy to train and I had to think out of the box. She’s got a lot of movement so to try to balance that and keep her moving is not always so easy. And to try to make it look harmonious and easy is a challenge.
“Donatella is a perfect angel, and she tries and tries, and gives so much effort.
“It’s so interesting because people often say that I have a `type; of horse, but if you walk through the aisle, they are all different horses. I think that they all have the ability to be expressive in their movement and have scope and volume, but they all have different mechanics and they are very different to train.”
Alice’s stallion, Glory Day, won the FEI 5-year-old Preliminary class with her trainer Marcus Orlob of Annandale, earning an impressive score of 9.140. She rode her homebred Gjenganger to sixth place in that competition, earning 8.040.
“In the test, he was 100 percent with me,” Marcus said, discussing his ride.
“He has a spook at E; I don’t know what he was afraid of. That was it,” the rider said, noting he had a spooky warm-up. “He is a workhorse. That is the nice thing with him; he is willing to work all the time. That makes it much easier for me.”
He observed, “I think Alice is the dream owner to have. She does whatever is right by the horse and me. It is a very good relationship. The horse is very straightforward. It is a pleasure to work with both of them.”
In the USEF Four-Year-Old Horse competition, another New Jersey entry was a winner. Katryna Evans rode Fontenay, from the Readington stable of Cesar Parra. to first place on 8.940.
Recounting the horse’s history, she said, “He was at a sales and training barn in Germany. All three horses that we have here (at Festival of Champions) are one version or another of the F-lines, so it’s cool. They all have good characteristics. They have the foundation, and I credit that to Cesar because he’s really big on the basics. This is my first time here, and I’m really grateful to have this opportunity with such awesome horses and to have a good experience, I’ve had fun so far! I felt like I could really enjoy that ride.”