Parbery off to a strong start at Nationals

Brett Parbery has had a strong start to the 2015 Saddleworld Australian Dressage Championships, taking out the Prix St George Championship with the horse Longvue Florencio.

Parbery and his mount’s winning score of 70.290% edged out second place combination Rodney Martin and SPH Sonata Hit who received a score of 68.947%. The fight for the minor placings was close with Lisa Martin and First Famous coming in third with a score of 68.815%.

Later in the day Parbery partnered with PPH Zeppelin to win the FEI Intermediate A, the first of two classes that will decide the Medium Tour Championship.

Parbery also has his Grand Prix horse DP Weltmieser at the 2015 Saddleworld Australian Dressage Championships and he was pleased to begin his campaign on a strong note.

"He's (Florencio) not that exposed to big environments so the rain on the roof was a little distracting for him, but overall he was really good. We struck a really bad time of the day because it rained really heavily and we were saturated.

"He's definitely a horse for the future," said Parbery.

The second day of competition brought heavy bouts of rain to the Sydney International Equestrian Centre and Para-Equestrian riders bore the brunt of the wet conditions.

Having already completed their Team Tests on Wednesday, riders were back in action on Thursday to perform the Individual Championship Tests.

Grade 3 rider Katie Umback and her 11 year old Warmblood Gronskovlunds Marquis backed up their strong result in Wednesday’s Team Test (in which they scored 71.139%), with another promising performance which resulted in a score of 68.984%.

Umback is a member of Equestrian Australia’s Para-Equestrian High Performance Squad and is firmly focused on the future.

"We're improving week by week and month by month so I'm really looking forward to the next 12 months.

"I'm really happy, I trusted my boy and he always delivers. My team's test was a personal best, I haven't scored over 70% in that test before," she said.

Heath Ryan riding Utopian Cardinal was also a winner on day two, taking out the Equestrian NSW Intermediate II Championship. The pair was convincing winners of the class receiving a score of 67.921%.

Results