The national championship for 6-year-olds saw a familiar face in the champion’s blue cooler at the end of Sunday’s FEI 6-Year-Old Final Test at the U.S. Dressage Festival of Champions. Deambulo PWD, a 2019 Hanoverian gelding owned and ridden by Petra Warlimont (Evergreen, Colo.) was the 5-year-old champion at Festival of Champions in 2024. This year, she repeated the feat in the 6-year-old class.

Photo – Petra Warlimont aboard Deambulo PWD (©Leslie Potter/US Equestrian)

“We’ve been working on progressing towards the 6-year-olds and trained with Christine Traurig and Hannes Baumgart in Germany with online lessons,” said Warlimont. “I try to keep him up to where he needs to be since I don’t have help in Colorado, but thanks to modern technology, it’s good, and he’s been doing really well. He’s doing all the right things. He’s so big and it’s impressive that this horse can just go into this little rectangle and do so well, so I’m super excited.”

Although there were some bobbles in the final test, which Warlimont attributed to his being a bit tired at the end of a long week at the show, “Dewey” still earned high marks for his gaits to add to his impressive total score of 88.200% in the FEI 6-Year-Old Preliminary Test.

“In his brain and in his balance, he’s so mature,” said Warlimont. “When I tried him as a 3-year-old, he had that balance already, which is why I scrambled all my money together to try and purchase the horse, because I’d never felt that before. In the canter, he was so balanced in both directions even as a 3-year-old, and it’s just continuing to get better as we go. His body is still growing, he’s not finished, but he’s a massive horse and when you ride a 10-meter circle, he balances himself. That’s how he is naturally.”

Coming Back Stronger

This year’s 6-year-old reserve national champion is Oliver R Tambo SV (Just Wimphof x Enjoy SV), a 2019 Dutch Warmblood gelding owned by Deborah Alfond and ridden by Mary Lauritsen (North Salem, N.Y.) “Ollie” earned composite scores above 82% for both of his tests and was the winner of the FEI 6-Year-Old Final Test. Lauritsen was able to fix some gaps after the first test to come back stronger in the second.

“We felt really prepared coming into the competition,” she said. “The first day, I admittedly didn’t feel our normal connection in the ring, and that was really disheartening to me. The horse was there, and I felt that I needed to rise up to him. Today, after two days to decompress and train with Christine [Traurig], I came in with so much more confidence.”

Some positive coaching helped Lauritsen and Ollie get back the spark that has made their relatively new partnership a successful one.

“I was hard on myself after the first day, and Christine told me, ‘Don’t think about yesterday; think about tomorrow,’” she said. “That was some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten from a coach—let go of past results and really focus on riding the horse that I have here and now. She’s so supportive and she believes in my horse so much. We had a great training session yesterday where she helped me find the freedom again and find the connection that I lacked the first day. I’m so grateful to her, and grateful to the [USEF Dressage] emerging program, which we’re involved in, to receive that training. So yesterday felt like just another day in the office, which gave me the cool, calm collected feeling that I could do this and really show up for him.”

Full Results

2025 U.S. Dressage Festival of Champions Live Stream

The 2025 U.S. Dressage Festival of Champions was streamed live on USEF Network, brought to you by Adequan^®. US Equestrian subscribers and members can watch replay the replay on demand. Learn more here.

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