Five years and one day after Isabell Werth won the FEI Dressage World Cup leg at Lyon with Weihegold OLD, she came back into the same arena and won it again with the mare's grandson.
Viva Gold OLD is ten years old, in his first season at international Grand Prix, and was making his World Cup debut. He scored 87.890% to take Friday's Grand Prix Freestyle by more than two percentage points, and he did it to a Neil Diamond soundtrack that closed, inevitably and to considerable approval, on Sweet Caroline.
It was Werth's eighth Grand Prix Freestyle victory at Lyon, a record she already held and has now extended, and she was unusually candid about her uncertainty beforehand. The atmosphere at Eurexpo had been electric, she said, and she had not been sure how a horse at his first World Cup would react to it. He was fantastic. There is, she added, something special about him.
Germany’s Isabell Werth and Viva Gold OLD at the FEI Dressage World Cup™ in Lyon (FRA). Image: ©M. Froment for Equerry Co.
The Bloodline Doing the Work
The genetics explain why the German camp has been so careful with this horse.
Viva Gold OLD is by Exquis Vivaldi out of Weihronce, a daughter of Weihegold OLD by For Romance OLD. Weihegold took Werth to three consecutive World Cup Final titles between 2017 and 2019 and remains among the most significant dressage mares of the modern era. Her grandson has now won on his World Cup debut in the arena where she won five years earlier, with the same rider in the saddle.
He has never finished outside the top two in an international competition. He has already produced a son out of Laura Tomlinson's Grand Prix mare Rose of Bavaria. For a ten-year-old stallion in his first Grand Prix season, that is an unusually complete set of credentials.
Werth's own assessment was that he has grown and developed enormously over recent months and weeks, and that he can become an absolute top horse. Coming from a rider who has produced more of them than anyone in the discipline's history, the phrasing carries weight.
Verboomen Takes the Grand Prix, and Something Else with It
Thursday had belonged to Belgium. Justin Verboomen and Zonik Plus won the Grand Prix presented by CRE-ARA on 79.065%, their second consecutive Lyon Grand Prix title, with Werth and Viva Gold second on a personal best of 77.587% having been first into the arena and having set a standard that stood for most of the morning.
Verboomen was clear afterwards that the result mattered less than what produced it. Lyon was the pair's first competition since the World Championships at Aachen in August, where they had finished second in the Grand Prix on 80.885%, slipped to fifth in the Special and come fourth in the Freestyle on 88.439%, falling well short of what two European titles had led people to expect.
He described the Aachen experience as genuinely difficult, for himself and, he believes, for the ten-year-old Rheinlander stallion, and he rode in Lyon with relaxation and lightness as the stated priority rather than the score. The crowd responded to it from the moment the black stallion came down the centre line.
By Friday some of that composure had gone. Zonik Plus was a little more tense in the Freestyle, as Verboomen acknowledged, and 85.810% was a strong result that left the door open rather than closing it.
Belgium's Week
Belgium took two of the top three places in Thursday's Grand Prix and three of the top four in Friday's Freestyle, which is a remarkable return for a nation that was not a dressage power a decade ago.
Larissa Pauluis and Flambeau completed the Freestyle podium on 80.530%, and a fourth Belgian combination posted a substantial new personal best of 80.455% in a faultless test that drew particular praise for its piaffe and passage.
Belgian dressage has risen on roughly the same curve as Belgian jumping, and the contrast with Britain's age-group results is instructive. Britain won both individual world titles at Aachen through Charlotte Fry and finished fourth and fifth in the Young Rider and Under-25 team competitions at the European Championships in July. Belgium is building from the other end.
The League Table
Lyon was the second leg of the 2026/27 Western European League, following Herning from 13 to 18 October, where Cathrine Laudrup-Dufour and Mount St John Freestyle took both competitions to make it three consecutive wins at the Danish fixture.
Werth's victory lifts her to twenty points and a share of sixth place in the standings, with eight legs still to run. France's Alexandre Ayache leads on thirty-five, though thirty of those were earned in another division.
Nine riders from the Western European League qualify for the Final, with defending champion Becky Moody holding an automatic place provided she contests at least two legs. The League moves to Stuttgart from 11 to 15 November, then Madrid from 26 to 29 November, before London ExCeL in mid-December and Mechelen between Christmas and New Year.
Our full account of Charlotte Fry's double gold at the World Championships in Aachen is here [LINK anchor: "Our full account of Charlotte Fry's double gold at the World Championships in Aachen is here" → Aachen dressage Freestyle report].
