Britain went into Aachen as reigning Olympic champions with a team that had three of the Paris gold medallists in it, and they rode the dressage phase like a side that intended to lead from the front.
Tom McEwen and JL Dublin, and Gemma Stevens with Flash Cooley, gave Britain a strong opening day. By the end of the phase Laura Collett and London 52 headed the British charge and Britain held the individual lead and a share of the team gold position, with Germany applying steady pressure in front of a home crowd.
The British four were Ros Canter with Lordships Graffalo, Collett with London 52, McEwen with JL Dublin and Stevens with Flash Cooley, the first three all part of the Paris 2024 gold-medal team.
Michael Jung (GER) rides fisherChipmunk FRH during the Dressage Phase of the FEI Eventing World Championship. Image: FEI/Benjamin Clark.
The German Response
Germany had Michael Jung and fischerChipmunk FRH, and the 18-year-old gelding did what he has done at every championship of his career: posted a dressage score that forced everyone else to be perfect. Jung finished the phase on 23.0.
For context, Jung's own assessment of the horse, that he does great dressage, runs fast cross-country, and jumps like a jumper, is not a boast but a description of a rare profile. Very few event horses are top-tier in all three phases. Chipmunk has been for the better part of a decade.
Malin Hansen-Hotopp and Julia Krajewski completed a German side that would finish the championship with silver and two riders in the top twenty.
The Format Question
At a World Championship the dressage runs across two days, with the team and individual competitions running concurrently and no drop score available in a three-from-four format if a rider fails to complete. That last point would matter enormously by Saturday.
Where It Stood
Britain led. Jung led individually. Germany were close enough that a single British cross-country problem would change the arithmetic entirely, and Britain would, in fact, have one.
The phase also produced the championship's most under-reported storyline: a combination sitting 38th after dressage on 32.6, and another down in 56th, both of whom would climb substantially over the following two days. Aachen's cross-country was about to reward horses that could gallop.