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Sunday, June 3, 2007

Rebecca Knollman, of Maineville, Ohio, is showing that she and Solaris Hit can compete in any region. At the Markel/USEF Young Horse Dressage Eastern Selection Trials, being held during the Raleigh CDI-W/Y/J Capital Dressage Classic, Knollman and Solaris are right in the top tier in the Five-Year-Old competition.

Just two weeks ago, Knollman and Solaris were the big winners in the Five-Year-Old Markel/USEF Five-Year-Old Horse Central states selection trials at Lamplight Dressage. The pair finished there with a score of 78.08. Knollman and Solaris started off even better at the Eastern competition. The Young Horse competition consists of two parts – the preliminary test and the finale test. At Lamplight, they finished the first day of competition with a 75.80 percent and their final score after two days was 78.08. They started off much better in Raleigh, scoring 81.00 percent.

“My whole goal coming here was to improve on my scores from Lamplight. So I’m happy I was able to do that today. Axel Steiner told me that the 8.5 given me for submission was the highest they had awarded in submission for the day. So that was very nice,” Knollman said. “Submission in the past hasn’t been her highest score, but we’ve really worked on getting her through and soft and more and more on my aids. And she’s gotten much stronger also.”

The panel of judges in the Young Horse competition at Raleigh is made up of Jane Ayers, Janet Foy and Axel Steiner. They’ve been busy because both the Five-Year-Old and Six-Year-Old FEI classes have been rather large – 11 competitors in the Five-Year-Old competition and 14 in the Six-Year-Old. Riders are competing for a chance to attend the World Breeding Championships in Verden, Germany later this summer.

Knollman said if she gets an invitation to the competition, she’ll definitely go. “I would love to be invited to go to Verden and if we’re invited, we will accept that invitation. We’ll just have to see how things work out. There are many people here who would love to get an invitation to Verden. And, there are many awesome horses here. It’s just a nice group to be in. It’s an honor to be here. It’s great to see so many good riders and so many good young horses in our country coming along. It’s not just about me and my horse doing well. It’s about our country as a whole getting better horses and doing better. And whoever goes to Verden that we can represent out country well.”