14 april 2015

CAI Caravino: a promising start

For the first time, an international driving competition was organized at “Lo Sperone” Riding Centre in Caravino and everything turned out to everybody’s full satisfaction.

Caravino lies close to Turin, right next to Ivrea, where every year thousands of people gather for the famous Carnival enacting the battle of oranges, staged by 35 pairs and 16 four-in-hands, beautifully turned out with skill and dedication.

The bright sunshine and the perfectly draining soil along the river, which would assure perfect ground conditions with any kind of weather, made the going easy and enjoyable during the 2-day 2* Driving Event on the week-end following Easter.

The foreign judges, Bert Jambon and Sarah Mullins, and the French and Swiss competitors who ventured to travel to this unknown site assisted the organization. The entire staff, headed by the President of the Jury, Mariangela Beverina, warmly welcomed them. Comfortable horse boxes with guarded FEI enclosure, plenty of space for vans and caravans, well balanced dressage scores, six nice marathon obstacles, not too hard on the horses but nonetheless challenging and a rather tough cones course laid out by Course Designer Gabor Fintha, strongly supported by local FEI Candidate CD Gabriele Panier Suffat, represented an ideal season opening.
A big surprise was the participation of Cristiano Cividini in the Single Pony Class, with a promising Haflinger, Aron-L, which he was able to lead to victory just ahead of the highly promising Jasmine Lunardon, the youngest Italian top class driver and winner of both the marathon and the cones. Cividini received also the special prize for the best dressage score of the event obtained with his KWPN horse Amanno, in spite of elimination in the last marathon obstacle.
Werner Ulrich and Cyril Maret placed 1st and 2nd in the Teams, Jozsef Dibak won the Pairs followed by Francesco Aletti Montano, the whole podium of the Singles was speaking a foreign language with the Swiss Stefan Ulrich on the highest step, in front of French driver Mathieu Ory Degomme and Urs Bernhard from Switzerland. In the Pony Pair class Alessandro Calzavara, a new entry on the International scene, ended up first, in front of Emilio Gamba who was able however of qualifying for the World Championship, in spite of having one of his top Haflingers rejected at the Vet Check. Marco Perinotto with his four ponies could only compete against himself but he achieved his goal: a qualifying result for Breda.
Saturday night a very generous buffet was offered by the Organizing Committee as well as refreshments for everybody during prize giving, before saying good-bye till next year.

A CAN was held at the side of the CAI, which made up for the small participation from abroad: a quite normal situation for a first-time location. The OC is sure however that positive comments will definitely play in favor of motivating the international competitors to participate in the future, especially coming from the neighboring countries.

Elvezia Ferrari