QSEC's First Competition a Winner - Nathan Floats Qld Dressage Championships

Furst Friedrich and Jayden Brown

A'Seduction and Sally Evans

Prestige VDL and Sheridyn Ashwood

Victoria Welch and Brentanus

QSEC's wonderful stables

On 7 - 10 October the first ever competition, the Nathan Floats Queensland Dressage Championships, was held at the prestigious new Queensland State Equestrian Centre (QSEC) and proved to be the perfect event to kick off QSEC's life as a premiere equestrian venue.

Competitors and organisers alike gave the venue a big thumbs up! The stabling and camping area is really well designed, safe and practical, and the indoor and outdoor arena surfaces are fantastic to ride on. All structures - stables and indoor arena - are designed to be beautifully cool in the Queensland heat and all involved with this competition were very positive about QSEC and its future as a top class facility for all types of events. 

Friday featured the Young Horse classes and we were thrilled to see Ben Conn and the gorgeous Riverndell I Like It, who is currently for sale on Horsezone, win the Five year old class, while the Four Year Old class was taken out by Nikita Osbourne riding Jaybee Alto and Six Year Old winner was Tor Van Den Berge on Riverside Kav.

Saturday started with a frightening storm and buckets of rain which meant that unfortunately all events in the outdoor arenas had to be cancelled for the day.  The weather cleared in the afternoon and all was able to go on as scheduled with the Freestyle and Para-equestrian tests in the indoor.  In the evening a ring-side dinner was held, which was well received and guests were treated to an impressive night program that featured a vaulting display, performances from the German Shepherd Obedience Group and a reining demonstration from Wayne Williams who thrilled the crowd with fast circles and sliding stops on his gorgeous palomino Quarter Horse.

Sunday dawned a beautiful day and the outdoor arena surfaces had held up very well considering the amount of water that was dumped on them on Saturday morning.  Due to the cancellation of classes the day before, there wasn't enough time to run the full program so it was decided by the riders and committee to run the highest test at each level, so everyone still had a chance to compete.  The higher level classes in the indoor arena ran as scheduled with several scratchings meaning there were some gaps in the program, however, the horses who did compete were a pleasure to watch.

There were a total of 12 judges needed to run the Championships, two from New Zealand - Jude Greenslade and Julie Brougham - and three from interstate - Carolyn Lieutenant (New South Wales), Virginia Creed (Victoria) and Judy Sheldrake (Northern Territory) - as well as seven Queensland judges.  When you consider each judge needs a penciller and all the other people required to run a Championship competition, there was a lot of manpower behind this event!

There were several stand out performers at the Championships, including A'Seduction a gorgeous stallion ridden by Sally Evans from Ballina, New South Wales.  A'Seduction and Sally won the Grand Prix, Grand Prix Special, Intermediate II, Intermediate Grand Prix and the Freestyle.  Congratulations to Sally and A'Seduction.  View A'Seduction's Stallion at Stud Listing on Horsezone.

Other lovely stallions, featured in Horsezone's Stallions at Stud, who competed with success were Prestige VDL and Horsezone's home page poster boy Legend Of Loxley.  Prestige VDL won the Prix St Georges and was the Small Tour Champion, while Legend of Loxley achieved 68.636% in the Prelim 1D for third place.

Jayden Brown and San Andreas had a good Championships, achieving 76.364% to win the Preliminary 1D and 71.572% to place second behind Nicole Tough and Furst Tyme on 73.143% in the Novice 2D. Nicole and Furst Tyme also won the Elementary 3D with 70.128%. While Tor Van Den Berge and Lauries As achieved 70.395% to win the Advanced 5C. 

Overall I thought the horses were gorgeous with so much lift in front and springs in their feet - making the more difficult manoeuvres such as piaffe and passage appear almost easy!  These quality horses and riders were a real pleasure to watch. As always I have a soft spot for chestnuts with chrome and I was instantly in love with the gorgeous Furst Friedrich who was ridden by Jayden Brown to win the Inter I Freestyle Championship and place second in the Inter I.  Another stunning chestnut, was the lovely Brentanus ridden by Victoria Welch who placed third in the Medium.

When asked about the horses at the Championships, organiser Karen Herald said, "The number of entries was similar to previous years I've been involved with organising the event.  We started out with eight Grand Prix horses however there were some scratchings unfortunately due to Saturday's awful weather.  Performance-wise, the imported horses really stood out at this event with several gaining over 70% in their tests.  A few years ago competitors were doing well to get in the mid 60s.  There are some great horses and riders in Queensland at the moment and we think it's time we showed the southern riders how well Queenslanders can ride dressage!  Now we have this fantastic venue Queensland Dressage are looking forward to holding bigger and better events, including a CDI event on 27 - 29 July 2012, so Queensland riders have the opportunity to get world ranking points."

Congratulations to Karen and the other organisers on a well run event and I look forward to seeing more gorgeous dressage horses at the CDI next year!

See links to full results below for more details on winners and placegetters from all classes.

Story & Photos: Jo Johnson/Horsezone.

Quick Links

• View the Horsezone Photo Gallery (more photos from www.jmsphotography.biz being added soon).
• View major winners here.
• View all results of winners and placegetters here.
• Visit Equestrian Queensland's website.
• View dressage horses for sale on Horsezone.