Saturday September 18, 2004

Successful Equitation Finals at the 2004 MSEDA Championship & Breeders Classic

By Amber Heintzberger

From around the country, Junior dressage riders traveled to the Kentucky Horse Park for the second annual Dressage Seat Medal Finals on September 12, continuing a legacy begun last August during the Northeast Junior/Young Rider Championships in Darien, Connecticut. This year the Finals were held during the MSEDA Championship & Breeders Classic.

Developed largely by rider and trainer Lendon Gray the Finals are meant to promote and reward excellence in equitation, including correct seat, position and use of the aids in the discipline of dressage. It is conducted as a group class in which riders walk, trot and canter in both directions as a group and then may be asked to individually perform movements such as leg yielding and lengthenings, as well as work without stirrups. This year the 14-and-over riders rode their individual tests without stirrups, while the thirteen-and-unders kept their stirrups.

Since the focus is on the rider, competitors are allowed to borrow horses, which also makes it easier for riders to travel long distances to participate. The winner of the 14-and-older division, Jaclyn Meinen, traveled from orange County, CA to compete on Susan Posner’s Touchee, (Leonidas x Antritt), a seven-year-old Trakehner mare that also won at third level with Posner in the saddle the morning of the finals.

Since Posner, of Lexington, broke her arm in a car wreck in which someone plowed into her and flipped her SUV off of an embankment, her daughter Kristin kept Touchee and the rest of a barn full of horses in training all summer.

Meinen spent the week before the show developing a partnership with the mare, with the help of Posner and Freestyle developer Cynthia Collins, who helped arrange the partnership.

“She is an uncomplicated horse,” said Collins. “They really became a team this week.”

Meinen spent last summer at the International Academy in Warendorf, Germany and trains with Hilda Gurney in California. “Going to Germany opened my eyes and I really buckled down and focused after that,” she said. “Hilda has been a huge encouragement,” she added. “My own horse needed a lot of training so she is also the one who suggested that I ride a borrowed horse in the Finals. I basically took a year off of other showing and focused on this.”

Meinen continued, “I think this is a cool program. A lot of dressage is about the horse. This is a good chance to focus on yourself and become a team with the horse.”