‘There wasn’t a low light today’ – Lottie Fry heads British top three in London dressage grand prix

Lottie Fry won the London Horse Show dressage grand prix, supported by Horse & Hound, today (18 December), ending the class more than 4% above her peers in a confident victory.

Last year Lottie and her own and Van Olst Horses’ Glamourdale won the freestyle at this show, having finished third in the grand prix. But today they started off as they mean to go on, with a virtually flawless test that showed off all the 14-year-old black stallion’s power and expression. They scored 80.78%.

“I don’t think there was a low light today,” said Lottie. “Everything just felt absolutely incredible. The trot transition after the canter pirouette could have been a little more precise, but he was amazing.”

Lottie said Glamourdale had a holiday after helping Britain to team silver at the European Championships in the summer.

“Since then we’ve just been really working on the self-carriage, the lightness, because he’s always been very light, but we have to make sure we’re showing it in the arena as well,” she said. “We’ve just done a lot of basic work, not too intense. And it seems to have really paid off, so I’m very happy.”

Tomorrow Lottie will ride her new freestyle for the second time – “it’s a really exciting freestyle, it’s all about flying because that’s what Glammy does in the arena” – and will hope to put behind her a bad experience when she first performed her new routine at the Europeans in Crozet in August.

She explained: “The music was a lot louder than we initially thought it was going to be and it was just too much. Even for me, I was sat there thinking ‘Ow.’ So it was a real shame. But we move on and I’m really excited to ride it tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll have a nice, confident round.”

Lottie Fry headed an all-British top three in today’s London Horse Show dressage grand prix; Charlotte Dujardin was second on her return to this show after a year away (76.54%) and Becky Moody third with Jagerbomb (75.04%).

Norway’s Isabel Freese and the Totilas son Total Hope OLD, who were second in both classes here last year, were fourth today, with two British London debutantes – Germany-based Susan Pape (Harmony’s Guililanta) and Sadie Smith (Swanmore Dantina) – in fifth and sixth.

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