The Rising Star In Dressage That Nobody Is Talking About! Check Out Ryan Torkkeli!

We are moments away from the Canadian Dressage Team being announced but the one rider that is missing from the team contention is the one that everyone should be talking about!

I get a lot of people asking why I am so hard on the Canadian dressage riders and the reality is, I am hard on bad riding and corrupt judging, and Canada just seems to like to take part in both of those things. A LOT.

Ryan Torkkeli skipped out on both of those things and headed across the pond to compete and he is doing a damn good job of it! And we are here for it! It is nice to see a Canadian rider with the talent to actually ride a horse through a dressage test instead of pulling its head in and leaning into the thigh rolls for dear life.

For the first time in a long time, I am giddy as I squee with delight that there is actually promise for the future of Canadian dressage. One that is not a legacy of love for rollkur.

This weekend at Leman’s Ryan Torkkeli and Sternenwander scored a 70.7% with a few mistakes in the Grand Prix and tied for 6th place in the CDI 4*. In our previous videos, we have talked about the judging bias being 3-5% higher in Wellington, Florida. The top Olympic qualifiers for Canada are barely scraping up 72% in the Grand Prix in Florida. In short, what I am trying to say, is that Ryan Torkkeli is a rising star and he is the one to watch!