Five Swiss Grand Prix dressage riders shone in a special exhibition highlight dressage in Switzerland during the 2017 CSI international show jumping competition in Basel, Switzerland, on Friday 13 January 017.
The evening dressage exhibition started off with a quadrille made up of Markus Graf, Alexandra Zurbrügg, Gilles Ngovan, Barbara von Grebel. The latter presented Royal Blue (by Romanov x Weltgeist), while Zurbrügg rode her top horse Get Time (by Rubin Royal x Graf Remus). Markus Graf had saddled Rachmaninoff (by Rotspon x Davignon) and Gilles Ngovan was aboard Dream of Night Fluswiss (by Dream of Glory x Rubinstein).
Afterwards, Switzerland's number one Grand Prix rider Marcela Krinke-Susmelj gave a demo on her rising 12-year old Grand Prix horse Smeyers Sopran, a Danish warmblood by Soprano x Akinos, owned by Marcela's long time sponsor Irina Meyer. Krinke and Sopran performed a kur to music based on a medley of film music.
The readers of the Swiss equestrian magazine Pferdewoche also elected the 2017 Swiss Bred Horse of the Year and the winner was honoured in Basel. The recipient of the award was Charlotte Lenherr's 13-year old Swiss warmblood Darko of De Niro ZS (by De Niro x Gagneur), bred by Thomas Schneider from Bevaix, Switzerland, and owned by Mauz Zellweger-Schmidhauser. the horse made its international Grand Prix debut at the 2016 CDI Le Mans last October and finished 13th in the Grand Prix (66.340%) and 7th in the Kur (70.000%).
Photo © CSI Basel
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