E-Mail This Page

Monday March 31, 2008

Van Grunsven Wins 2008 World Cup Finals
Text and Photos copyrighted: Astrid Appels/Eurodressage.com

Anky's Winning Freestyle

The pair entered in collected walk and halted dead still; a big improvement to the two rolling stops on Thursday. She opened her ride with a string of piaffe and passage, all beautifully executed with Salinero kicking electrically off the ground in relaxation. The extended trots were ridden with forward energy. In canter, the one tempi's were beautiful. Only in the two's some tension was spotted in each change to the left. So, no mistakes and much pezzaz in the ride resulted in 85.200% and the 2008 World Cup title.

"I'm very, very happy. I was most happy on Thursday, but there were little things because of lack of concentration," Anky commented at the press conference. "In the test [Kur], everything just worked out. There was nothing that I could have done better. At least that's what I think at this moment. Most of the time, I'm very critical of myself, but this, I thought, was one of my best tests with Salinero."

There was one issue to Anky's freestyle: her bland music. Anky's new kur is called "Dance of Devotion" and is composed by Dutch piano virtuoso Wibi Soerjadi. It has become a distillation of Soerjadi's kur composition for Imke Schellekens-Bartels's which he made in 2007. While Imke's freestyle music is absolutely enthralling and emotional with meaningful piano sounds that build up to a climax, Anky's is not piano, but violin based with a whispering piano in the background. There is no story in the kur, the viewer does not get carried away and even though there is a moderate crescendo at the end in the final piaffe-passage, the music leaves no sticking impression.

Anky, on the other hand, is very pleased with her new music. "I'm really happy with it myself. I can understand that people have to get used to the music. Maybe I had to get used to it too in the beginning, but I immediately liked it a lot. I do think that maybe you have to listen to it a couple of times, but that's also the reason that I started a new kur already for this World Cup Final and of course for the Olympic Games."