THE LONG GAME – TOYOTA SA DRESSAGE CHAMPIONSHIPS

Over five days at Kyalami Park Club in September, the best dressage horses and riders in the country worked their way through the grades, from Preliminary up to Grand Prix, first in the Championship Tests and then in the Freestyles, with the two results combined to decide the overall Victor Ludorum at each level. There were plenty of winners, but the championship kept returning to a single idea, one that anybody who has ever produced a horse will recognise: the good ones take years, and there is no shortcuts along the way.

Nobody embodied that better than two riders who, in very different ways, ended up defining our week.

The young rider and her mare

Janina Rexrodt walked away with the most talked-about prize at the show, the Toyota Starlet Cross. What earned her the spotlight and the chance to win this car in the first place was what she did in the arena. Over the course of the Championships, she took two national titles, at two different levels, on two very different horses.

On Rosalie she won the Prix St Georges. It is a partnership with real history behind it: Rexrodt has ridden the mare since she was six, bringing her up through the grades herself, which is exactly the slow, unglamorous work that this Championship rewarded. On Vincent Vegas she took the Intermediate I title, and that one was arguably the bigger statement. Vincent Vegas has never been the easiest ride, and the mark of the week was not a single impressive score but how consistent the pair managed to be under Championship pressure.

That she is doing all of this as a student, fitting two competition horses around her studies, only makes the results more remarkable. Two titles at that level, in one week, is not something that happens by accident.

The champion who went back to the beginning

If Janina Rexrodt shows the climb, Nichola Mohr shows what it is worth.

Last year Mohr stood at the very top of the sport, winning the Grand Prix Victor Ludorum on her special gelding, Callaho Winston. This year she was back at Preliminary level, the very bottom of the grades, producing a young horse in Callaho Ella Mai. There were no real expectations considering she acquired the mare less than a year ago at the Callaho Warmblood Stud Auction. Yet, testament to Nichola’s skill and feel, the pair won the Preliminary Championship convincingly, and in the Freestyle they posted 78.520 per cent, the highest single score recorded anywhere at the Championships, across every level.

There is something hugely instructive and impressive in this story. A rider with a Grand Prix title to her name, choosing to go back to the start with a green horse and do the patient work again, is the whole philosophy of the sport in one image. The horse at the top took years of exactly this. Now Nichola is doing it once more, and the scoreboard suggests the next one is going to be worth watching.

The rest of the champions

Beyond those two riders, the titles were shared around, and a pattern worth noting emerged: at several levels the Freestyle crowned a different horse than the Championship test had. For instance, Candice Hobday took the Grand Prix Championship test on Arco 360 Esclavo Fm, only for Dawn Newman and Callaho Lincoln, third in that test, to win the Grand Prix Freestyle meaning Dawn and Callaho Lincoln were crowned the Victor Ludorum on the day. Hobday had her own double lower down, however, winning both the Medium Tour Title and its Freestyle on Arco360 Rocinante XVII.

Vay Snyman went double at Advanced on Silhouette. Bobby Archer took both Novice titles, though he split them across two horses, Adela Revelation in the Championship Test and Fontaine DB in the Freestyle. Down at Preliminary, Mohr and Callaho Ella Mai completed their sweep.

The para champions

Two riders took National Para Titles, and both spoke to the same theme of partnership that ran through the whole week. Charmaine Watts, a long-standing supporter of the sport who attends every show alongside her husband, took the Grade I title on Sultan, a horse she has ridden for many years.

Abby McIlree won the Grade II title on Galisco, and what she had to say about the horse stayed with us. As she describes it, a large part of her preparation is desensitisation work, so that on competition day Galisco is calm, reliable and looking after her. It is a lovely inversion of how we usually talk about producing a horse: not schooling the horse to perform, but building a partner she can trust completely.

The car

Which brings us back to Rexrodt, and the prize everyone was talking about. On the final evening, at the Greatest Showman-themed gala dinner, Toyota drew one name from among the Championship’s Victor Ludorum winners at the top levels of the sport. Rexrodt, with her two titles, had two entries in the hat, alongside Hobday and Newman. Her name came out.

If there was a message in the 2026 championships, it wasn’t about any single result. It was about the length of the road. A student who has ridden her mare since the horse was six. A Grand Prix champion back at Preliminary, doing the patient work all over again. A para rider whose whole preparation is about trust. The titles might change hands each year, but the work required to earn them certainly does not!