Hot Favourite Takes Early Lead with Comeback Queen on Day One of Under-25 World Championships

Hey EN, a quick note before today’s report:

On Saturday, July 18, two statements from British Eventing were posted informing us that two serious incidents had taken place at competitions — one at Swalcliffe in Oxfordshire and one at Penrith in Cumbria. Both events were abandoned for the remainder of the weekend, and live scores were removed from the scoring platform out of respect for those affected. The full statement released by British Eventing can be found here.

Following other losses in our sport, EN has undertaken the following protocol:

These incidents represent incredibly dark days within our sport. We understand that the news cycle is cruel, particularly in cases like this. To help keep the cycle from perpetuating in the light of such loss, EN will continue to publish stories and news on an as-needed/timely basis, but we will refrain from sharing these updates on our social media platforms for the next few days. We feel as powerless as anyone in these situations and feel that the least we can do is not move on lightly. We will also not speculate on the circumstances of the incidents, nor will we allow this to take place in the comments sections.

We also know that there’s a World Championship (two of them — one this weekend at Millstreet for U25 riders and one next month at Aachen for Seniors) right at our doorstep. We’ll be covering these events to honor our commitment to our sponsors as well as to continue to provide coverage of the sport’s key competitions. However, we hope you’ll understand that we don’t feel it appropriate to approach these with our usual happy hype. Our content will be quality, but out of respect to all of those we have lost, we hope to offer this as a time of reflection.

Our thoughts are with all of those affected by these losses and we work for a safe sport in everything we do. We thank you for your understanding.

Anyone affected is encouraged to seek support through the British Eventing Support Trust Helpline, which is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on 07780 008877.

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“I feel relieved, mostly,” admits 25-year-old Calvin Böckmann, one of two match-race favourites for the gold medal at this week’s inaugural FEI World Championship for Under-25s, held at Ireland’s Millstreet International Horse Trials.

That welcome exhalation comes after a job well done in the ring: he and the sixteen-year-old Altair de la Cense lead the first day of dressage here in Co. Cork, on a 27.6 that represents the Selle Français mare’s best-ever score at four-star.

“I’ve had her for ten years now, and it’s kind of cute, because [these days] we totally get to see another side of her,” says Calvin, who rides the mare for his brothers, Jason and Liam, and mother Simone, who own her in tandem. “Now, I don’t really warm her up for more than ten minutes; these past years, I was trying and trying, like the German I am, to gain every single point I could. But this year I’ve been taking it so chill with her, and she’s absolutely loving it.”

It will be, no doubt, some small consolation for missing out on the senior World Championships next month, which Calvin – who was Germany’s travelling reserve for the 2024 Paris Olympics, and represented his country at last year’s European Championships at Blenheim Palace – is “heartbroken” to be missing out on this year.

“To be honest, on the one side it kind of breaks my heart not to be able to ride at the Worlds with Phanty [The Phantom of the Opera, with whom he’s previously represented Team Germany],” says Calvin. “But on the other side, being here with this horse now means the world to me, because we’ve really come the whole way together, beginning at one-star level and coming up to the championships now.”

The partnership, which began in 2017 after the former Pony European Champion graduated to horses, hasn’t been without its ups and downs – but it’s these hurdles along the way that have bolstered Calvin’s fierce love for the little mare. They were top ten finishers individually at the Junior European Championships in 2018 and 2019; as the step up to Young Riders loomed, Calvin was told time and time again that he’d need to find a different, better horse for the next level. He persevered; was selected; stepped up again to four-star, in 2022, and won Strzegom’s CCI4*-L on his and the mare’s debut at the level.

Two more placings at four-star confirmed the result was no fluke, and the pair were selected to represent Germany at CHIO Aachen in 2023 – the most prestigious competition of the level in the world. Here, the wheels fell off the bus, and horse and rider fell on cross-country, denting sensitive Ali’s confidence.

Calvin opted to step her right back down the levels to two-star in a bid to build her bravery back up. But she kept on stopping. He opted to end her season early in 2023, allowing her to rest and regroup without pressure. Most of the German eventing circle figured the mare was done, would never again come good.

But in 2024 she returned rejuvenated. That season, the pair only finished outside the top ten once – and that was an 11^th place finish – and closed the year with eighth in a huge field at Boekelo CCIO4*-L. Last year, they had a lighter but just as competitive season, placing in every international they started except CHIO Aachen, where they delivered a steady, confidence-boosting run to finish double-clear and just outside the top twenty.

Now, Ali has found herself at a World Championship that feels tailormade to show off what the pair have built together.

“I’m kind of here to have a good time,” grins Calvin. “I want to try to give Ali the best run that I can. She’s not a horse who loves hills the most, and I think it’s going to be challenging enough condition wise. But it means a lot to be here. I think it’s very special for younger riders to have competitions like this; it does feel like a proper, proper championship to me, and that’s why I’m here to give it a proper go.”

Ireland’s Jenny Kuehnle sits second overnight with the only other sub-30 score of the day: a smart 29.2, earned with the seventeen-year-old Sammy Davis Junior, formerly the ride of Jenny’s partner, Cathal Daniels.

“Sammy Davis Junior and I have been partners for a few years now, and this is our second championship,” says Jenny, who piloted the son of Imperial Hights around the 2022 FEI Young Rider European Championships for individual fourth and team bronze.

That multi-year partnership has also encompassed a few five-star starts: they were clear around an underwater Pau in 2024 and 8^th at Luhmühlen the same year. In all that experience gained together since she took the reins in 2021, though, they had never managed to crack the 30 barrier – until this season, when they put a 29.9 on the board in the CCI4*-S at Kronenberg last month.

“I’m really pleased with him today,” says Jenny. “We had one little mistake but he was really good as always, and I can’t fault him. He always tries really hard.”

Sammy is, says first-time pathfinder Jenny, “the monkey of the stable – he has to be involved in everything, and he loves attention. He’s definitely the favourite, even if we’re not meant to have them!”

France’s Lisa Gualtieri holds overnight third with the sixteen-year-old A d’Aunis on a 30, which must be a balm for the soul after a tense start to the competition saw them held in yesterday’s first horse inspection. But for Lisa, it’s all about looking ahead, and enjoying the ride with her long-time partner.

One of the things that’s been so heartening about this event so far has been the longevity of the partnerships – there are no horses here who were bought with this competition in mind, and the majority of the riders we spoke to throughout the day have climbed the levels with their ride here, learning along the way and creating the foundations of the top-level careers they’ll have with the superstars yet to set foot in their stable. They know their quirks, their weirdnesses, their likes and dislikes, and over and over again, we heard the same sentiments: they owe us nothing, I want them to have fun, I do things like this because that’s how they like it.

Lisa and A d’Aunis are no different. 23-year-old Lisa gives the gelding a very short warm-up because six years together mean she knows he prefers that – “I trust that he knows his job, and anyway, he’s not the craziest one I’ve got,” she laughs – and it’s clear that they take a huge amount of confidence from one another both in the ring and outside of it.

“We know each other very well now,” she says. “When I was ending my pony years we bought him, and then we were nearly directly into Covid, so we got just one year to become together. But we did the Junior Championship, we did twice the Young Rider Europeans [including taking an individual silver medal in 2024], and then we started our first Senior year and did a Nations Cup for France, so we’ve set a lot of milestones together.”

France finds themselves in a very close second place in the team standing after today’s competition, which saw the first two rider rotations come forward to the dressage ring. While Lisa and A d’Aunis are competing as individuals this week, overnight fourth-placed Clara Cazeneuve and Dolce Gabana, who posted a competitive 31.7, lead the charge for the tricolour as France makes an early bid for a podium finish.

Spain has just two riders in the hunt in this year’s inaugural championship, and both tackled their tests today on nearly matching rangy greys – but it was the penultimate rider of the day, Marçal Piro Patau, who made the biggest impact on the leaderboard. He and the aptly-named Eventing de Fay, a twelve-year-old Selle Français, earned a 32.2 – by far their best score at this level since the horse’s step up last season.

“I just feel so lucky to come inside this arena,” says Marçal, who returns to Ireland after a stint based in Ennis a few years ago on a jumping yard. “The horses are a bit tired down there [in the warm-up], and then they come up and see the arena here and get quite fresh again. So I’m very happy that my horse did a good job, and that we did quite a good test for what we were expecting.”

Marçal, who recently graduated with a double degree in Computer Science and Business Management, has his biggest fan by his side this week: his father, the family’s first horse lover, whose two sons diverged athletically as children. While Marçal’s brother tried a bit of dressage before ultimately committing to football as his sport of choice, the boys’ father was thrilled when Marçal showed an interest in going further with his riding – and this week at Millstreet, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone filling their phone’s camera roll up quite as committedly as him.

“He really tried that I liked horses, and if I fell off the ponies, he was the first one who took me back there,” laughs Marçal. “If I’ve ridden 1000 hours, he’s been there supporting me for 1001. That’s why this whole thing is going so well.”

The last rider of the day, Austria’s Amy Rose Frühwirth, is her country’s sole representative this week – but the central European nation is one that’s used to sending high-performing solo flyers to major events. The most prominent example of that, of course, is Olympian Lea Siegl; it’s hardly a coincidence that Amy Rose’s long-term trainer is Lea’s father, Harald.

The credit for the patience that earned her overnight sixth place and a score of 32.7 with Gin Tonic 150, though, is entirely her own. The fourteen-year-old Trakehner had suffered a loss of confidence in the first phase while competing in the Junior European Championships at Hartpury, where they ultimately scored a 47.6 – and in the four years since that day, Amy Rose has been chipping away at helping him believe that there’s a safe space between the boards again.

“He got so scared there – he freaked completely out because the ring beside me finished before me and the crowd clapped and he went crazy,” she says. “Since then, he can go crazy if there’s music or anything. But today he really behaved great; I was so surprised and happy.”

The key, she says, is “just time. And magnesium! I’ve tried everything. I don’t go around the arena [before the bell rings], I just work him on a circle at the front or the side [and keep him focused]. It’s a relief, today.”

Millstreet’s uniquely enormous arena no doubt offered some help here – there’s a huge amount of space on either side to work in the moments before the test. But fundamentally, it’s four years of patience, and four years of love, that have culminated in a peak at the perfect moment.

Overnight seventh place is the domain of the other partnership in that match race for the win: Great Britain’s Alice Casburn and Topspin, who have been to more British five-stars than most of us have had hot dinners, and who are perhaps the ultimate pony novel story in a field that’s chock full of feel-good trajectories.

Alice, whose mother, Caroline, bred Topspin from a mare she’d taken to Advanced – and the grandmother, too – knew that she wouldn’t be vying for the lead at this stage of the game with the rangy gelding, who is one of the best cross-country horses in the field and arguably the best showjumper, too. Probably, their 33.3 is about bang-on what they’d have been aiming for – but all those details sort of seem to pale into insignificance when Alice is asked, quite innocently, what the gelding means to her.

Once she wipes the tears away, she’s able to put the partnership into words.

“He’s done Juniors, Young Riders, and five-star, and now this,” she says. “He owes us absolutely nothing, but it really is fantastic to have him feeling so well and just so excited to still be out. There’s not many horses you can say completely put your name on the map, but he’s done exactly that for me. He feels as good at eighteen as he has any other year; he’s got a big bum on him, and when I got him off the lorry his eyes were on stalks. He’s so excited to be here, but what he’s done for me, I honestly can’t put into words.”

“I do,” admits Alice, “feel pressure here this week. But at the same time, I sort of don’t, because at the end of the day he’s a fantastic horse. He’s not your flashiest, biggest mover, but he tries so hard every single time, and today, I just wanted to put a middle of the road clear round on the board to help set the team up.”

Her score joins the 38.3 posted by British pathfinders Tom Bird and Lenny to put the team in fifth place of five at the moment, but tactics abound: tomorrow sees the line-up’s dressage heavyweights come forward to propel them up the very tightly-packed national leaderboard.

On the other end of the team results spectrum, both of the USA’s Thursday representatives made it into the top ten, which means that the US team sits in first place at this early juncture of the competition.

Best of the two by a very small margin is Meg Pellegrini, who put a 33.3 on the board with the former Will Coleman ride Dondante to share seventh place with Alice and Topspin.

“I’m thrilled because he walked, and that’s not something he always does,” laughs Meg. “That was my biggest takeaway! Honestly, though, I’m happy with everything – he was so relaxed. This is a perfect atmosphere for him because he likes the crowd, and it’s nice to then come in here and just feel a little bit settled. He’s such a good old-timer – every time I come into the arena with him it puts a smile on my face.”

She’s not alone in having a smile on her face. For Dondante, who competed at five-star with Will, his second career with Meg has been perhaps his best era yet.

“He’s been so good to me,” smiles Meg. “I call him Coach, because of how much he’s taught me. We’ve only been together since the end of 2024; he was coming back from a break after Maryland 5*, and Will was sort of unsure if it would be the best call to bring him back to the level.”

Meg, who had recently moved her string of horses to the Coleman’s yard, was offered the ride “as an Intermediate/three-star horse. I was like, ‘of course, that sounds great!’ I didn’t have a tonne of horses, and he was like, the most perfect creature to me. I’d only really seen him in the field, and then they bring him in and he’s this dragon. I just loved him from the get-go, and even though we weren’t ever going to go beyond three-star, he just kept showing up. He kept getting better and better and sounder and younger and everything. I think he really likes having a girl, and he really likes being the focus. He and I are just kind of buds, and I respect him so much.”

Just behind her, in tenth place and on a 33.6, is US pathfinder Quidley Kellerman and Blakeneys Cruise. There was a horrifying moment about three minutes ago when I realised that adding the nine-year-old horse’s age to the twenty-year-old rider’s age still didn’t come close to my age, and frankly, I’m going to have to wrap this report up soon and go process that – but suffice it to say that the pair in tandem have been prodigies, really, as they’ve climbed the levels together. But prodigies in a head down, work hard, don’t shout too much about it kind of way, which makes Quidley seem unbelievably normal for a girl who got a horse to the Young Horse World Championships when she was just seventeen.

That year, too, she packed her bags and left her hometown to move to the UK, where she’s been based with Australia’s Kevin McNab ever since.

“It’s quite special, and I’ve had loads of support along the way,” says Quidley, who hails from Texas. “You end up growing up quite quickly, but to have everyone around me supporting me from afar and close obviously makes it a bit easier. I’ve adjusted along the way, got loads of experience, and found my way through – and Poncho and I have kind of grown up together, so it’s pretty special.”

Their test today was sweet and workmanlike, and although Poncho is among the youngest horses in the field, he was unruffled by the huge arena and buzzy surroundings.

“It’s always just about getting him a positive experience, because he’s young, but then I’m obviously on the team so trying to produce the best result possible, too,” says Quidley. “We’re all working together this week, and I did think that for him, that was quite good – a nice smooth test to start the week off.”

Sandwiched between those two high-flying American riders is German individual competitor Konstantin Harting, who also piloted a nine-year-old to a smart day one finish. He and Botswana 4 close out the day in ninth place on 33.4 – a huge result for a horse who hasn’t always found this phase easy.

“She’s very special – actually, in a few different ways in the dressage,” says Konstantin with a grin. “She was super in the trot work; I had a glimpse of the board and saw she was trending below 30, which is quite cool as she’s new at this level. The canter work is a bit green, so we lost a few marks there, but I’m delighted. I think it’s a personal best for us at this level, and it’s a cool place to pull that off.”

In order to help the sharp mare manage her surroundings, Konstantin held her back in the collecting ring while the rider before him finished their test. Once the applause subsided, he hacked up the chute and through the small barn that acts as an entry into the arena, accompanied by his groom.

“For horses like this, it’s quite a difficult entrance, because it’s narrow and there’s an archway, and then they look out to this big arena. She was quite tense going in, but then she was actually pretty cool in the arena.”

Konstantin has had the mare for five years now, and rides alongside his job working for Aachen, where he’s part of the cross-country team.

“It makes me a bit emotional, to be honest,” he says. “I got her as a four-year-old from her owner, who’s here today, and she’s always been special – but also mighty. It took some time for us to get to know each other, and I’ve produced her myself, so to pull off a four-star dressage test when I haven’t done lots of myself, makes me pretty proud. She’s all quality, and I think she’s a proper horse for the future.”

US individuals Jack Curtis and Luska Candy Clover and Molly Duda and Disco Traveller narrowly missed out on top ten places, scoring a 35.2 for 11^th and a 35.6 for 13^th, respectively, while Canada’s German-based Kyle Morton posted a 41.9 with Shannondale Gambit to take 20^th overnight.

Tomorrow sees us head into the second half of the class with a further twenty horses and riders to come forward. It all kicks off at 14.00 local time (9.00 a.m. EST), and can be live-streamed via ClipMyHorse.TV. We’ll be back with all the stories you need to know – and in the meantime, Go Eventing.

FEI Under-25 World Championships at Millstreet, presented by Connolly’s Red Mills: Website | Live Stream | Entries & Scoring | EN’s Coverage