Ennis out to turn around poor dressage score
Puzzled by her 53.1 penalties, leaving her second best of the Irish in ninth place, she nevertheless is hopeful going into today’s cross-country phase at the Meath event.
“It’s the first time the horse has come across judges that didn’t really like his way of going. I thought he felt good,” she said.
“This isn’t our end goal, though, we are trying to get to the Europeans. This is only a step, an important one of course, but we’ll see how things are after the cross-country. Dressage is subjective, whereas cross-country and show jumping speak for themselves,” said Ennis, who was runner-up last year.
The Meath rider feels one change made for today’s trip over fixed fences could prove problematic.
“They’ve incorporated a tricky complex with a very narrow fence, the width of a horse’s face. It’s very cleverly done. I’m out early and will have no indication of how the time will impact, so I will have to just go out and ride my own competition. He won at Ballindenisk last year, so cross-country shouldn’t be an issue.”
Britain’s Pippa Funnell tops the leaderboard with Billy Beware and Billy Landretti, while Aidan Keogh is in the vanguard for Ireland on Master Tredstep in eighth place.
Briton also holds sway in the CCI two-star, led, respectively, by Kitty King (Persimmon), William Fox-Pitt (Fernhill Pimms) and Ollie Townend on Cooley Master Class, his winning ride at Ballindenisk, Cork, in April.
In St Gallen, Ireland finished fourth in a rain-disrupted Swiss Nations Cup that saw the second round cancelled and replaced with a jump-off between one rider from each of the four top teams. Crucially, Ireland placed second of the points-chasing nations, leaving them third on the Division 1 leaderboard of the Furusiyya FEI Series.
Cian O’Connor and his Olympic bronze-medal mount Blue Loyd opened with a clear, followed by four faults from Capt Michael Kelly (Annestown). Shane Carey (Ballymore Eustace) produced the discard score of 12, while Shane Breen and Balloon had the last fence down to leave Ireland sharing first place with Belgium, Switzerland and Britain on eight faults after round one.
Breen was the standard bearer for Ireland in the four-way jump-off, but a single error left him fourth. Laura Renwick (Oz de Breve) gave Britain its first Swiss win in 24 years.
