According to some Kentucky Horse Park visitors, who have traveled to Lexington for the 2010 Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event, the concurrent holding of the dressage and jumping test events for the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games is a well-kept secret. Would-be dressage spectators keen on watching the Kentucky Cup CDI3 (the official name of the dressage test event) were having difficulty determining when yesterday’s Grand Prix class started or who was competing.

As I write this, the second leg in the Kentucky Cup, the Grand Prix Special, is just getting under way. For the start list and times, click here. You can follow the competition in real time, with results posted online here. Click on the class you wish to view and then select Results. Scores are posted as they come in.

US rider Tina Konyot and the stallion Calecto V won Wednesday’s Grand Prix (70.68%) over Belinda Trussell and Anton of Canada (70.21%). Another Canadian pair, Bonny Bonnello and Pikardi, were third with 68.63%. I’m not on the scene in Kentucky, so I can’t share first-person impressions of the rides; but you can view The Chronicle of the Horse‘s online report and photos here. One thing I can say, however, is that Canada is edging into the top placings with increasing regularity lately. It is almost certainly not a coincidence that Canada’s improved results began after US dressage Olympian Robert Dover began coaching its dressage team.

Last year’s FEI World Cup Dressage Final champions, US rider Steffen Peters on Ravel, are absent from the Kentucky Cup competition. With Peters not in attendance to rack up scores in the high 70s and 80s, it’s becoming apparent that the remainder of the field of North American dressage competitors are not putting the kinds of scores on the board that would be in the running for a WEG medal. For scores in that stratosphere are what it takes nowadays to do well on the international scene — pretty astounding, considering that scores in the low to mid-60s were the benchmark as recently as about 15 years ago. Dressage has come a long way, baby