Heike Holstein completes brilliant weekend for Irish Dressage with sixth place finish in Belgian Grand Prix

  • 1 March 2020, 18:16

Kildare’s Heike Holstein and the Irish-bred mare Sambuca have added to a brilliant run of Irish Dressage results on the world stage this weekend, by taking sixth place in today’s four-star Freestyle To Music Grand Prix at Lier in Belgium.

Heike Holstein and Sambuca

The pair produced a superb performance to score 73.795% which was just over one percentage point off their best score as a combination of 74.915% set in Windsor (GBR) last year. Victory in today’s competition went to Dutch rider Marlies van Baalen with Ben Johnson with a score of 78.155%. On Friday, Holstein and Sambuca scored 69.630% on their way to a 16th pace finish in the CDI4*Grand Prix.

Holstein’s excellent results in Belgium came on the back of superb performances from Ireland’s Kate Dwyer and Dane Rawlins at the five-star show in Doha, Qatar. Kate Dwyer and the 14-year-old gelding Snowdon Faberge produced a personal best score of 70.043% on their way to fantastic victory in Saturday’s Grand Prix Special while they finished inside the top 10 in the Grand Prix on Friday.

In the Grand Prix Freestyle To Music in Doha, Ireland’s Dane Rawlins recorded another excellent result when taking ninth place with Espoire. The pair came close to breaking their personal best performance when scoring 70.925%.

Speaking after a memorable weekend for Irish Dressage, Horse Sport Ireland CEO Ronan Murphy said:

“Congratulations to Heike Holsten on her excellent result in the Lier Grand Prix, which completes a really impressive run of results this weekend for Heike, Kate Dwyer and Dane Rawlins on the world stage. All of our High Performance athletes have been working extremely hard as we prepare for the Tokyo Olympics and this really is an exciting time for the sport of Dressage in Ireland.”

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