1 of 2Photo: Pontus Lundal/TT
The Danes introduced dressage dynamite and celebrated the country’s first gold medal in the team competition.
For the Swedes, it wasn’t loud.
There were mostly puffs when it came – and another world championship ended up off the podium.
– It’s always annoying to be fourth. Guild Leader Bu Jina says, we have to be more daring and take turns.
Winning team events in the Nations Cup is one thing. There, the national dressage team has dominated and admired in recent years. But all this is an illusion. The world’s best kits give their best in the major tournaments and competitions.
When it comes to WC, the elite of the Swedish riders are not enough to reach the lofty goals. Hope was to avoid another fourth place, but it wasn’t close to a medal.
– I’m disappointed, but in this company, fourth place is good. That way, fourth place is good, not bad, says Bo Gina.
Laudrup Dufour Show
Instead, the British challenged the Danes for gold and the Germans took bronze by a good margin for the quartet Patrick KeitelTherese Nilschagen, Juliet Rammell and Gina Hogberg.
Katherine Laudrup-Dufour, Nana Mirald Rasmussen, Karina Kasu Kruth and Daniel Bachmann-Andersen were widely celebrated on the pitch of FC Midtjland in the Danish football league.
– I tried to ride on the frontier, but I stay on the right side of both chaos and wit. Laudrup Dufour, the world star and Danish gold medalist, says that in team competition you have to take calculated risks and he has done it well.
On social media, she also made a plea to the house audience, not to start clapping before she and Vamos Amigos are done.
– It takes a little horse time to get used to such big yards and why clap before you’re done? Laudrup Dufour says the audience behaved well.
81.864 was the highest competition percentage between teams.
Keitel disappointed by the judges
Patrick Kittel on Touchdown was the last to walk out of the Swedish teams and enter the track after the Dane.
The team anchor requirements were as simple as they were challenging: Put together a new personal best with flying colors. The rest was about the German Frederick Wanderers being forced to perform poorly on the Duke of Britain.
Neither one nor the other works.
Kittel did his job, no more. After that, he was more than satisfied with his horse and how he responded to the reactions of the fans after the complete blow to Audrup Dufour. He directed his disappointment at the judges who gave no more than 76.522 percent and was really upset with the same union after Wanderers got 76,661.
Ready for the Olympics
Something of a correction to the Swedish wound is that fourth place took the national team to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
– That was one of the goals. Now it’s over and feels good. Then we aimed to get a medal place here. We had a good feeling and we trained well. But if there’s no flaw on the track, the points go down, says Jenå.
We need 79-80% horses to participate. I think one of the people we have here could actually do that next year (EC in Italy).
Dressage continues with individual competitions, mainly GP on Monday and GP kür on Wednesday. The trio of Keitel, Rammell, and Nellshagen stepped into the special, while Hogberg took his turn in the restroom.