Bermuda won this year's FEI World Dressage Challenge after riding their phase of the contest yesterday at the Vesey Street's National Equestrian Centre.

Two judges from Costa Rica and Colombia flew in for the show having already judged the riders from World Group X which included Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. Second to Bermuda was the Cayman Islands while Trinidad was third.

Normally Haiti is also in Bermuda's world group and the FEI judges Ricardo Rojas-Cruz and Rosa Cristina Franco Morales were supposed to go there to judge their competition before flying to Bermuda but the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti forcing their riders to pull out.

Bermuda show organiser Michelle Ingham said yesterday after the competition: "We understand that the Haitian riders are OK but they have lost family and friends in the earthquake. The FEI have set up a fund to help build their facilities back up and yesterday we also raised some funds at the show. We will try and raise more money when the FEI World Jumping Challenge is held in a couple of weeks."

While Bermuda's riders all competed individually at the Challenge, the Bermuda Dressage Group also had to name a four-person team before the event.

Ingham said: "We really got it right this time. I am ecstatic about it. We would have named the same team had we been able to after the competition."

Bermuda's team was composed of junior rider Ashley Gibbs on Landtango, Dawn Fox on Lancelot, Ann Lindroth on After Dark and Suzette Sailsman on Wiriana. They had a team score of 67.02% to put Bermuda on top.

High score of the day went to Fox who was first in the Adult Elementary Test with a score of 69.73%. Second was Lindroth with 63.78% while Rebecca Carne on Limited Edition was third with 60.27%.

Gibbs scored 67% in the Junior Preliminary Test and 63.24% in the Junior Elementary Test.

Jackie Scott was first in the Adult Preliminary Test (61.03%) while Marlena Tucker on Star Quality was second (60.52%) and Kim Carreiro on Mr. Majestic was third (58.28%).

Sailsman was first in the Adult Medium Test (64.25%) followed by Fox (62.75%), Lindroth (61.37%) and Nick DeCosta on Soft Spoken (60.25%).

Paula George on Wiriana scored 60.53% in the Prix St. George Test.