Vilhelmson-Silfvén and Devanto Top the Leaderboard With New Personal Best Score at 2022 Adequan® Global Dressage Festival

Wellington, FL – The seven-time Swedish Olympic rider Tinne Vilhelmson-Silfvén took home the winner’s blanket and sash in the Grand Prix Special CDI4*, presented by Palm Beach Equine Clinic. This is the first weekend of action at the 2022 Adequan® Global Dressage Festival (AGDF) in Wellington, Florida. AGDF, which hosts seven weeks of CDI competition and runs through April 3.
Riding Lövsta Stuteri’s 13-year-old Devanto, Vilhelmson-Silfvén logged a new record score for the Holsteiner gelding at the level – 73.425% – despite a blip in the first set of one-time changes. Overall, they were rewarded with a smattering of eights in the test and a nine for extended canter. Runner-up spot went to Susan Dutta (USA) on her own and her husband Tim’s 13-year-old gelding Figeac DC with 68.596%.
Devanto was formerly campaigned at Grand Prix by Germany’s Juliane Brunkhorst. Vilhelmson-Silfvén did her first CDI on him at AGDF exactly a year ago, and this was their eighth CDI test.
“It’s a gift to get a ready-made horse,” said the 54-year-old Vilhelmson-Silfvén. “But that’s not to say it’s easier, because you really have to make them your own. You have to learn how they work, and they have to learn how you work. You have to give them time to understand you. I get to understand how a horse like Devanto – with all this power – how he reacts, if he reacts, if he’s too tense, or if he’s over ambitious. He’s very sensitive, and I like that.”
Vilhelmson-Silfvén is a regular on the Wellington circuit and values everything that AGDF offers.
“In Sweden, we travel three days to every show, so you can’t go to too many one after the other,” she added. “Here you can go again and again and try to figure out and adjust your own way of competing. It gives you so many possibilities. Getting to know a horse, or having young ones, it’s super.
“You can also have your whole string here and ride them all at once, and still go home every day and ride the ones there. In Europe, you’re away for a week at a show and you leave the whole stable. Here I can choose to ride as much as I want,” concluded Vilhelmson-Silfvén.
It was the final competitor in the Intermediate I CDI1*, Susan Pape, who swept the class with a unanimous first place from the five judges. The British rider, 58, rode Harmony Sporthorses’s 11-year-old Jazz x Flemmingh mare to 72.265% at only the pair’s second international show together. They had more than 2.6 percentage points in hand over second-placed Shannon Dueck (CAN) on As You Wish.
Christina Vinios rode Deauville in the pair’s first international show to a winning 66.265% in the FEI Intermediate A CDI2*. Five Rings Farm’s 18-year-old Oldenburg gelding is by the De Niro son Del Gado and out of a Gervantus I mare.
Dressage classes resume on Sunday morning, and include action in Young Riders, two-star small tour, and big tour classes as well as the hotly-anticipated first qualifying rounds of the Summit Farm Future Challenge FEI Prix St Georges and the Lövsta Future Challenge FEI Intermediate II — both classes designed to identify and nurture talented up-and-coming young horses.
For more information and results, visit www.globaldressagefestival.com.
Press AGDF | Photo ©SusanStickle Tinne Vilhelmson-Silfvén (SWE) leads the FEI Grand Prix Special CDI4* on Devanto, whom she has only been competing for a year.