Alice Tarjan was always going to be a key player at the U.S. Dressage Festival of Champions.
How could she be anything else, after finishing sixth in the final U.S. Olympic trial last spring and bringing nine horses from her Oldwick farm to Lamplight Farm in Illinois for the championship?
Her credentials speak for themselves, and today she added to them, finishing first and second in the FEI Grand Prix with Candescent (73.673 percent) and Donatella (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.”