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Tuesday July 8, 2008

2008 CDIO Aachen
Text and Photos copyrighted: Astrid Appels/Eurodressage.com

Isabell Werth Wins CDIO Aachen Fifth Time in Her Career

Aboard Madeleine Winter-Schulze's Hanoverian gelding Satchmo (by Sao Paulo x Legat) Isabell Werth won the CDIO Grand Prix Kur to Music at the 2008 CDIO Aachen in Aachen, Germany, on Sunday July 6, 2008 and became the Aachen Dressage Champion for the fifth time in her career.

The 38-year old Isabell rode to a recomposed version of her "March with Me" freestyle. Her symphonically orchestrated kur with music by Vangelis was originally filled with thrilling vocal arias by soprano Montserrat Caballe, but after the 2007 European Championships, some judges recommended getting rid of the vocals. The result now is an instrumental freestyle with the captivating soprano moments missing.

Werth's freestyle was atypically strewn with faults. The bay gelding broke into canter before the right half pass in trot and in the highly technical movement of two tempi's on a half circle followed by one tempi's on a diagonal, Werth lost count and made a mistake in the transition from two's to one's. The rest of the test, though, was astonishing. Great extensions, lovely piaffe and passage moments and the steady, soft contact with the bit was never lost even when those mistakes were made. They scored 80.150%.

"I have been focusing on the Grand Prix and the Special lately and haven't been practising the freestyle much," Werth confessed. "The mistakes were made because the movements came as a total surprise to Satchmo."