Well, the WEG team announcements are flowing fast and furious now. One of the most anticipated of the lot in Canada is, of course, the Dressage Team. When they set the score cut off at 70% there were more than a few people, myself included, who expected that to mean no team at all in Normandy. But some hard work and good results from a group of horses and riders, along with a little creative interpretation of the criteria, has me fully expecting a team of four to be announced in the coming days.
If you aren’t a DQ stalker and don’t know who is on the top of the ranking list, it’s right on the DC site, a shining example of transparency at work. I know quite a few of you aren’t aware that there was any massaging of the criteria, but that isn’t surprising since most of us don’t pay a whole lot of attention to those sorts of things, and press releases don’t tend to go out every time criteria are created or ‘clarified’, as these were in April. As the qualification deadline date of June 29th pulls up to the bus stop, we actually have two combinations who reached the magic 70% threshold, and a third who also does, using the ‘clarification’ of rounding up to the next number. The fourth is awfully darned close; hence my earlier comment about anticipating a full team to be heading to Normandy.
I’ve thought a great deal about the pros and cons of setting the bar with criteria and then lowering it when it becomes apparent that there won’t be enough qualified athletes to send a team to a major championship. My feelings are conflicted because I know how very hard the athletes work, how generous their sponsors/owners are, and how nurturing talent for next time around has to be part of the bigger picture. Besides, I don’t think now is the time to rain on anyone’s parade. Bring on the team announcement!
I was thinking back to past WEGs as I contemplated this post, and I realized I couldn’t remember who all went to Jerez 2002 and Aachen 2006. A google search turned up something I had no idea existed, but is a very useful resource. The FEI has a history hub with detailed results from every past WEG and Olympics. How cool is that? (I can’t quite believe I’m calling the FEI cool, but I promise not to make a habit of it.) I found looking at the scores from the past dressage WEG results quite an interesting read, though up until 2002 the scores were represented as those annoying thousands instead of percentages which makes them impossible to compare.
So who’s trending up and who’s trending down over the past 12 years? You might be surprised, or at least surprised at the actual numbers.
Trending up: Canada. Yes, the Canadian Dressage Team is still quite some way from challenging the top five teams in the world. But it’s not for lack of improvement, no sirree. At the 2002 WEG, Shannon Dueck and Korona were the top placed Canadian pair. They finished 23rd in the GP with 67.56%. I was there when Shannon and Kees earned their top 25 result, and it was both exciting and inspiring. It is not meant as any slight on their achievement to point out that their score would not even count as a qualifying score for the 2014 WEG team.
Last weekend, Megan Lane and Caravella earned the score of 72.980% in the Grand Prix Special at the Cedar Valley CDI. If they had earned such a score at the 2006 WEG in Aachen, they would have placed – wait for it – tenth! Yeah yeah, I know. It’s not a perfect parallel to compare scores at a North American CDI and the world championships. But I think you get my point. Let’s give credit where credit is due and tip our baseball caps to the Canadians who will be heading to Normandy, as well as those who came close. The bar HAS been raised. Now we just need a couple of Valegros and Totilas’ and we’ll be on the podium in no time.
Trending down: the US of A. This was really a shock to me, because the US is actually bucking the overall trend that scores world wide are getting higher. In 2002, Lisa Wilcox and Relevant were the US team’s second strongest pair, finishing fifth individually. Lisa earned 74.2% in the GP and 75.68% in the Special. At the London Olympics in 2012, the second best US pair was Tina Konyot and Calecto V. They scored 70.456% in the GP and didn’t even make the cut to the Special. I’ve known for a while that the US is a bit in the weeds lately, but I didn’t realize how far they’ve slipped. The US does share one characteristic with Canada at the moment: no Valegros or Totilas’.
I’m looking forward to the WEG dressage, but I’m not on the edge of my seat about the results, which I predict will go as follows:
Team dressage:
Gold for Germany, a tussle for silver and bronze between GB and the Dutch, fourth for Sweden and another tussle for fifth between Denmark and the US
Individual dressage:
Gold for Charlotte and Blueberry (making them the second pair in the world to simultaneously be the World, Olympic and World Cup champs), silver for my girl crush Helen and Damon Hill, and bronze, well that’s the only medal that might be up for grabs: Adelinde? Edward? Kristina? Is there a dark horse out there that might sneak in and pull a Matine? I don’t think it will be Totilas, but my crystal ball goes a bit cloudy on that one medal.
What do you think? Care to wager a friendly bet against me on any of these results? If so, just leave your prediction as a comment at the bottom of this post. Unless your pseudonym is JR, in which case you are not welcome here.
