Sunday, June 13, 2004

USEF Selection Trials - The First Week

Steffen Peters On Floriano Tops Stablemate, The Veteran Grandeur

Steffen Peters on Floriano, owned by Melanie Pai from Fulshear, Texas, finished fourth with 72.340%. Peters admitted Floriano’s performance this weekend took even him by surprise, “I’m very, very excited about Floriano, he’s such an extremely willing horse to work and sometimes too much.

The horse has incredible elasticity and three fantastic gaits. There’s still lots of room for improvement and I just talked to Klaus (Balkenhol) a little bit when we got done and there’s a lot of decisions that have to be made this week. It’s exciting to make those decisions. Obviously, coming into this competition I would have put my money on Grandeur (owned by Lila Kommerstad from Bradbury, California, that he would have been the higher placed horse.

The whole season at every single show Floriano got a little bit better but it’s a bit unexpected that he should move that far ahead of Grandeur so we have to make some very realistic decisions if he qualifies for the top five and goes to Europe.