The reign of Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro is (hopefully only temporarily) over. Germany’s Kristina Bröring-Sprehe and 15-year-old Hannoverian stallion Desperados FRH (pictured above) have taken the top spot in the FEI rankings, relegating the British combination to second place.
The German pair were team-silver medallists at the London 2012 Olympic Games, team-gold and individual-bronze winners at the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in 2014 and silver medallists at last year’s the European dressage freestyle final in Aachen, when they gave Dujardin and Valegro a run for their money.
“It looks like Valegro suddenly has a new rival,” Dujardin’s mentor, Carl Hester, said at the time.
His words couldn’t have been truer. Dujardin and Valegro had been the undisputed leaders of the FEI rankings for almost three years but the German combination now has a 68-point lead over them, with 2729 points to 2661. Four-time team-gold Olympic medallist Isabell Werth, also from Germany, lies in third place with Don Johnson FRH on 2,428 points.