Pointinger: “We want to ride with even more confidence”

With a harmonious performance in the FEI Intermediate A, Austria’s Lea-Elisabeth Pointinger secured second place at the CDI Achleiten (CDI3*). Riding her home-produced mare Francesca de Medici, the Lower Austrian scored 68.676%, finishing only behind Germany’s Yara Reichert aboard Force Majeure (69.235%). Third place also went to Reichert with Special Diva 3 (66.588%).

Pointinger was delighted with her performance and felt the work of the past few weeks had paid off. “After our last competitions, we still had a few things to work on, and today we managed to improve them really well. Francesca was incredibly focused, and I think we produced a harmonious and very accurate test. That’s exactly why we’re here – to gain more experience under competition conditions. Tomorrow we want to take a little more risk and highlight the strengths of our performance even better,” said the 32-year-old.

Pointinger has trained the now nine-year-old mare herself since she was four years old, and the long-standing partnership is clearly reflected in the arena. “We know each other inside out. She understands my aids, and I know her little quirks. That creates a special level of trust which really helps us at this level. Her greatest strengths are the pirouettes and all the collected work, while we still see room for improvement in the extensions. That’s something we’ll continue to work on. I’m convinced we’ll have many more great moments together in the future.”