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- Tip Top and Leslie Morse
- © Nancy Jaffer 2006
Wellington, Fla., March 19, 2006 -- If only they had parimutuel betting on dressage, I'd be financially better off today.
Looking down the line-up for the USEF National Grand Prix Freestyle Championship and U.S. World Cup League Finals, two names seemed like a lock to me for the Cup berths in Amsterdam next month: Leslie Morse and Arlene "Tuny" Page.
And that's exactly the way it turned out under the lights at the Palm Beach Polo Equestrian Club, where the competition took place Friday and Saturday nights. The big surprise was that Tuny, rather than the more experienced Leslie, ended up as the winner.
Leslie, whose number one mount is Kingston (winner of the Grand Prix and Grand Prix Special at the Zada dressage show where the finals were held) has tabbed him for the trials for the World Equestrian Games this summer in Aachen, Germany. Luckily, she has an accomplished number two horse in the Swedish-bred Tip Top, earning second place yesterday with a score of 73.4 percent. He showed off to a variety of lively tunes, including "Fever," and had a number of challenging moves in his test, such as two-tempis on a circle. Don't try that at home, kids!
Tuny, meanwhile, is just beginning to expedite the potential in Wild One, a blaze-faced Hanoverian who seems to increase his already considerable 17.2-hand stature when he performs. In the past, he has lived up to his name. This weekend, a better name for him would have been Mild One.
He listened intently to his rider, picking up her cues and, aside from a trot step or two in the walk, being on his best behavior at his least-favorite showgrounds. (He hasn't always reacted well to its hustle and bustle.)
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- Tuny Page on Wild One
- © Nancy Jaffer 2006
So Tuny had something to celebrate on her husband Dave's birthday last night, as Wild One made it two in a row and won the freestyle on the evening after he clinched the Grand Prix.
"I'm so proud of that horse," a glowing Tuny said after a ride that earned her 73.950 percent, the tri-color ribbon and a trip to the Netherlands.
"I felt like I could count on him if I could go out and ride him as confidently as I did last night (in the Grand Prix). That was the burden, not trying to win or beat Leslie," she said.
It was pretty amazing, because she never before had ridden her freestyle to its music, which ranged from "Wake Up Little Susie" to "Help me Rhonda" (with a cute little vocal of the line, "Get her out of my heart.")
The last time I saw Tuny ride a freestyle, the accompaniment was African chants.
"My husband was so sick of the African thing," she admitted. "Dave loves oldies."
She put the freestyle together with trainer Lars Petersen, the Danish Olympic veteran who is based at her Stillpoint Farm in Wellington.
"Americans need to have fun with their freestyles," she said, and despite the complexity of her effort, she looked as if she were having a blast.
"Three or six months ago, I wouldn't have been able to put together as difficult a freestyle," said Tuny. "I felt like I wanted to open with hard things right away and get points in the bucket, so I had room at the end of the ride to do more chancey things, like a passage zig zag." She started with double canter pirouettes at the entrance and in front of the judges at C, then delivered the rest of her performance with a "go for it" approach. She followed the advice of judges who have been telling her "open this horse up." I think that even more full-throttle work will really show us that Wild One is very, very special.
Tuny, who turns 50 this summer, targeted 2006 as the year to get a U.S. team patch for her coat, and now she has achieved that goal. I hung out with her last weekend, when she was getting help at her farm from U.S. team coach Klaus Balkenhol, and he told me then he saw Wild One as a "horse for the future," but definitely a candidate for the Cup -- where he can go to get experience, the mission for both Wild One and Tip Top (who do you think could even dream of beating Dutch Olympic gold medalist Anky van Grunsven on her home turf? Leslie and Tuny both are just hoping to make the final cut after the Grand Prix.) While Klaus felt the WEG this year wasn't in the cards for Wild One, he was confident the horse could be a candidate for the Olympics in Hong Kong two years from now.
