Brittany Fraser-Beaulieu of Saint-Bruno, QC, and All In (Tango x Damiro), a 16-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding that she co-owns with her father, Craig Fraser, and husband, Marc-Andre Beaulieu, are World Cup Final bound. The pair have been invited to compete at the FEI Dressage World Cup Final in Gothenburg, Sweden, March 30 to April 4 along with two US riders ‒ Olivia La-Goy Weltz Lonoir) and Charlotte Jorst (Kastel’s Nintendo) ‒ who will face a starting field of 18 at the annual event that was cancelled last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fraser-Beaulieu, 32, recently set a fresh Canadian record, scoring 79.330% in the Freestyle during week 5 at the Adequan Global Dressage and has her sights firmly set on an Olympic berth at Tokyo this summer. Fraser-Beaulieu and All In have been the highest placed Canadian combination on the FEI Dressage World Ranking for four years running. Canada has not had a representative at the World Cup Final since 2013 when Jacqueline Brooks and D Niro and Jaimey Irwin with Lindor’s Finest competed.
“I just decided that I’m going to try for World Cup Finals,” Fraser-Beaulieu said after her winning AGDF weekend. “Things are a little up in the air still with the rest of the season. I’d like to do the five star, to get another [Grand Prix] Special under our belt for the Olympics. We are just going to take it show by show and see how All In feels. If he needs to go we’ll go, if he feels tired we will take a break. I’m pretty flexible.”
There is some concern that the FEI World Cup Finals may have to be postponed or cancelled again because of the recent spike in Covid cases in Sweden and the presence of EHV-1. On March 1st, the FEI cancelled international events in 10 countries on the European mainland with immediate effect until March 28th due to the rapid evolution of the neurologic strain of the equine herpesvirus.
An FEI spokesperson commented on March 10th: “The FEI World Cup™ Finals in Gothenburg are scheduled to go ahead from 31 March to 4 April. The shutdown of international competition in mainland Europe is until 28 March, meaning that the Finals will not be impacted. However, clearly there will need to be increased biosecurity protocols in place at the Gothenburg venue and these will be similar to those implemented for the Finals in 2019, when there were outbreaks of both EHV and Equine Influenza in Europe. These protocols are currently being finalised.”
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