Festival of the Horse CDI-W/Y and U.S. League Finals for the Dressage World Cup
By Lynndee Kemmet for DressageDaily.com

East Meets West at Festival of the Horse

Riders, horses and spectators gathered at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center for the Festival of the Horse CDI-W/Y and U.S. League Finals for the Dressage World Cup couldn’t have asked for better weather. And show manager Glenda McElroy, of Cornerstone Event Management, couldn’t have been more pleased with the whole event.

“I’m really pleased. I’m pleased with the whole way the show ran,” she said. “This time of year we can have pouring rain here, but we’ve had a very dry winter and we ended up with a beautiful weekend. It’s been in the 70s every day – sunshine and not too cold and not too hot, just right.”

What made the show particularly special for McElroy is that the U.S. League Finals brought West a few of the East Coast’s best riders and she’s enjoyed getting to know them as much as they enjoyed coming to California.

“The East Coast riders have been really great. They added a whole lot of excitement to the competition,” she said. “The East Coast riders have been super. They’ve been helpful and friendly. We’ve done little dinner trips with them and other fun things, like a party Saturday and they were all there. They’re an entertaining group that came and it’s been fun to get to know them a little bit.”

Courtney King, who has been having a banner winter season on the Florida circuit, particularly with Mythilus, continued her winning ways in California as Mythilus pulled in more wins and more scores in the 70s. King said she was impressed with the level of competition in California. And McElroy said such a high-level of competition is pretty standard for California these days. “The best competition in the country is right here in Southern California. And this is basically an open show so there are very few amateur riders here. Most here this weekend are professional riders. We have over 300 horses here this weekend and we’re really pleased to see this many top horses.”

If McElroy had one wish it would be that some cost-effective way be found for West Coast and East Coast riders to compete with one another more often. “I wish there was a better way to exchange riders. It’s a real effort to go coast to coast, but everyone could learn from one another. I don’t know what the answer is, but it’d be nice to get to know each other better.”