{"id":507235,"date":"2026-01-10T23:37:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T23:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/507235\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T23:37:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T23:37:13","slug":"werth-begins-her-march-to-ft-worth-with-win-in-basel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/507235\/","title":{"rendered":"Werth Begins Her March To Ft. Worth With Win In Basel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Isabell Werth began her march toward Fort Worth, Texas, and the 2026 FEI World Cup Finals over the weekend in Basel, Switzerland, where the German rider claimed her first FEI Dressage World Cup qualifier victory of the season Saturday riding Wendy de Fontaine. The pair delivered a freestyle score of 86.15%, which while not a personal best, gave them a comfortable win and marked Werth\u2019s second consecutive victory in Basel, after topping last year\u2019s edition of the class with DSP Quantaz.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Werth, who plans to travel to the U.S. ahead of the World Cup Finals\u00a0to compete in the\u00a0CDI-W FEI World Cup Qualifier during Week 7 of the Adequan Global Dressage Festival<\/a>\u00a0(Florida), has said she plans to ride DSP Quantaz in Ft. Worth if all goes to plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Isabell Werth and Wendy de Fontaine ride a victory lap after winning the FEI Dressage World Cup Grand Prix Freestyle on Jan. 10 at the Longines CHI Classics in Basel, Switzerland. Martin Dokoupil\/FEI Photo<\/p>\n

This weekend, however, the focus was on \u201cWendy,\u201d who topped Friday\u2019s Grand Prix with a score of 78.67% before appearing\u2014more settled than on Friday, Werth said\u2014to win the freestyle by nearly 5 percentage points over her nearest competition, Swiss rider\u00a0Charlotta Rogerson, who thrilled the hometown crowd aboard Bonheur de La Vie to take second on a personal-best score of 81.29%.<\/p>\n

\u201cWendy was really on fire yesterday,\u201d world No. 3 Werth said of the 12-year-old Danish Warmblood (Sezuan 2\u2014Skovens Vanilla, Blue Hors Soprano) owned by Chateau de Fontaine and Madeliene Winter-Schulze. \u201cI\u2019m happy that today she was so much more focused. We only started a little bit tense in the canter. I think we need a few more competitions in a row to get where we want to be. The piaffe, passage and canter pirouettes were fantastic today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHer little sneeze in the one-tempis caused a mistake, but today I got my two-tempis right,\u201d Werth added, referring to an error in the Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Watch their winning freestyle, courtesy of FEI.tv:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Perhaps the loudest applause of the day was reserved for runners-up Rogerson and Bonheur de La Vie. Competing in front of a hometown crowd, the pair achieved personal bests in both the Grand Prix and the freestyle, with their 81.29% marking the highest Swiss freestyle score in many years. Finishing second on both days, Rogerson could hardly believe what had unfolded over the weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s incredible,\u201d Rogerson, 28, said. \u201cI still don\u2019t really realize what\u2019s going on. \u2018Bonheur\u2019 is an amazing horse, and we are starting to understand each other better and better in the arena. I\u2019m so grateful to have this opportunity, grateful for this horse\u2026 this is a dream coming true. I still need to pinch myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Third place went to Germany\u2019s Raphael Netz and DSP Dieudonne (80.72%), strengthening their lead in the FEI Dressage World Cup Western European League standings.<\/p>\n

See complete scores\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Isabell Werth began her march toward Fort Worth, Texas, and the 2026 FEI World Cup Finals over the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":507236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,7371,7372,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-507235","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fort-worth","10":"tag-fortworth","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115873437848009046","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}