2000 World Cup Finals

Coby van Baalen producing Personal Record

The difficulty of riding breeding stallions
is that they can get so nervous. The positive aspect of riding breeding stallions is that
due to their hormones and muscles they are just divine creatures. "Black Beauty" is his nickname but he goes through live as Ferro. Breeding highlight for the KWPN studbook in the years 1999/2000 is this gorgeous black pearl, which can be proclaimed as
the master of piaffe and passage. Coby
van Baalen rode to a personal record of 80.87% with her new kur based on the Greek Zorba theme. The selection of the Zorba for the piaffe and passage is simply thrilling and it matches Ferro's gaits perfectly. The
canter reprises are performed on banjo music which is just exhilarating. However, the negative aspect about this new freestyle is that the transitions are hard and abrupt. Ferro managed well,
but he still might have lost valuable points on them. Two slight remarks can be made to Coby's
ride and that were that Ferro was extremely tensed throughout his test and mainly in his piaffe, and although superbly elevated, the movement was a little hectic. Further Ferro fell over the shoulder
in one pirouette to the right. Nevertheless, when Coby saw her 80.87% personal record score she was about to burst into tears while trainer Johan Hinnemann hugged her for her excellent ride
that positioned her second in the final ranking.