Dorothee Schneider and Faustus win freestyle in Mannheim
The dressage competitions at the 58th Maimarkt Tournament in Mannheim came to an end with the Grand Prix Freestyle on Tuesday afternoon. The European Team Champions Dorothee Schneider (Framersheim) and Faustus won with a score of 81.045 percent. They thus led the classification by a clear margin. Second place went to Christoph Koschel (Hagen a.T.W.) and Dünensee with 75.760 percent, ahead of Franz Trischberger (Waakirchen) and DSP James Bond, who scored 75.150 percent.
With Dorothee Schneider and the 14-year-old Faustus, another pair from the German Olympic squad started the outdoor season in Mannheim. The Hanoverian gelding (by Falsterbo - Forrest xx) had last competed in March in Herning, Denmark, where Schneider also competed with him in the freestyle tour. With two fifth places and a freestyle score of 80.565 percent, the pair held their own in a strong field alongside four Danish championship riders. In Mannheim, Schneider and Faustus were the only pair in the starting field of the Grand Prix Freestyle that had already won a Championships medal in the senior category. Last year the two were part of the winning German team at the European Championships in Hagen a. T.W. "Faustus is a very special horse. He needed something to take his ego to the arena. He really felt like celebrating the music today and riding in front of me," Schneider said in Mannheim. "In the freestyle we hardly had any mistakes, Faustus was very motivated."
It was only in March that Christoph Koschel and the 13-year-old Hanoverian gelding Dünensee (by Dancier - Davignon I) competed at their first international show. At the Dressage Festival in Wellington, USA, they were part of the winning German Nations Cup team. Shortly before, they competed in the Grand Prix and Freestyle of the four-star tour. They came third in the freestyle with a score of 75.355 percent. In Mannheim they achieved an even better result with 75.760 percent and came second.
A pair from Bavaria placed just behind them: Franz Trischberger and the twelve-year-old, Free State-bred DSP James Bond (by Johnson - Rasso). The two of them managed a strong round with many highlights in the piaffe and passage as well as lightning-clean canter changes on a partly curved line. A further difficulty was the stringing together of single and double changes, which the pair managed very well. They were rewarded with 75.150 percent and third place - a new personal best result at international level.
