WELLINGTON, Fla.--Olivia LaGoy-Weltz and Rassing’s Lonoir won the Grand Prix CDI-W on March 5 at the Global Dressage Festival.
Olivia LaGoy Weltz on Rassing's Lonoir (Photo by Susan Stickle)With her personal best score of 75.739 percent, LaGoy-Weltz and Rassing’s Lonoir, won the Grand Prix and qualified for Sunday’s Grand Prix Freestyle CDI-W.
“I feel like he really stayed with me today," said LaGoy-Weltz. "Our goal for today was to just go in there and have a clean test, and it was almost clean, apart from a little jig in the walk, but I’m not too worried about that. For me, he gives a lot, and my goal was to keep him back and more collected with more brilliance. That was the plan, and I feel like we executed that well. I feel like we have ridden that line for a while where I keep him quiet but there is less brilliance, or there is brilliance but then it’s hard to keep the consistency, so it’s just getting better and better.”
“It feels really awesome to get a personal best, especially when it feels like it was just another day in the office," said LaGoy-Weltz. "We were already really happy with the last show, and in the last show if it had been clean, our score would’ve been closer to this type of score. This one would’ve been even higher if it was totally clean, so I’m feeling good about it.”
SHE HAS her eye set on the Dressage World Cup Final at the end of March, and LaGoy-Weltz said that she won’t put pressure on herself in regard to the Olympics just yet.
“For the moment, our strategy is to just focus on the World Cup Final," she said. "We had a different plan, but our timeline got pushed back, so I made the decision to just focus on World Cup at this point and take the pressure off trying to squeeze in Grand Prix Specials before that as well. I’m trying to do my best with that, and then take the Olympics as it follows. We want to do as well as we can and see where it goes from there.”
Canada’s Jill Irving earned second place in the Grand Prix CDI-W on Arthur with a 69.456 percent and third went to Mette Rosencrantz with Dzeko on 68.696 percent.
