<p dir="ltr">The rider with the highest score of the season is not leading the US Equestrian Open of Dressage. And the current leader's best result of the year is not one of the four that make up her total. Both sound backwards until you understand how the points system works.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The points come from a single class, the Grand Prix Freestyle. Where a rider finishes in it&mdash; their placing&mdash; is what determines the leaderboard score, and the size of the field sets how much that placing is worth. There are three tiers. In a Freestyle with more than ten starters, a win is worth 25 points, down to 8 for a placing of eighth through fifteenth. With six to ten starters, a win is worth 20. With fewer than six, it is worth 15. The full breakdown is in the table.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><img src="https://usef-admin.fly.dev/assets/435107fd-20f9-49ff-a983-846c5acf2bd5.png?width=1080&amp;height=1080" alt="Table showing the new 2026 scoring"></p>
<p dir="ltr">Two more rules complete the picture. Only a rider's best four Freestyle results count toward the standings. Once four are on the board, competing again only adds to the total if the new placing beats one already counting, in which case it replaces the smallest result. And a rider needs at least two qualifiers to be eligible for the Final.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.usequestrianopen.org/stories/ashley-holzer-on-flo-neil-diamond-and-what-the-series-is-for" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>Ashley Holzer</strong></a> currently leads on 51 points, and her season shows why placing matters more than the score itself. On any given day, the percentage a rider earns decides where they place. But the leaderboard is not built from percentages. It is built purely from placing and the points attached to it. So a rider's best day on paper can turn into one of their smallest point hauls.</p>
<p dir="ltr">That is what happened to Holzer at the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.usequestrianopen.org/stories/the-open-weekly-results-and-early-signals-from-the-winter-circuits" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CDI5* in Wellington</a>&nbsp;in January. Five-star shows always draw a high caliber of riders, and she was up against strong competition. She posted 75.290%, her best Freestyle score of the season, and came in fifth. In a six-horse field that placing was worth only 8 points. Because just four results count, that ride, her best of the year by percentage, did not even make her counting four total. Her 74.880% at Ocala, a lower score, earned 15 points because she came in second.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Isabell Werth</strong> is the counterexample. She posted the <a href="https://www.usequestrianopen.org/stories/isabell-werth-sets-new-us-equestrian-open-of-dressage-record-in-wellington" target="_blank" rel="noopener">highest score of the season</a>, an 82.660% Freestyle, and won the class for 25 points. But that is her only start. She currently sits on 25 points because that single result is all she has. The percentage won her the class on the day; beyond that it has no pull on the standings. And the two-start minimum means that one ride, however good, does not yet make her eligible for the Final.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The top 18 riders advance to the Final at Desert International Horse Park in November. As things stand, the cutoff line is a tie: <strong>Susan Dutta</strong> and <strong>Kristina Harrison-Antell</strong> are on 29 points. A tie at that cutoff widens the field, so 19 riders would currently make the trip to Thermal.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Two qualifiers are left, Dressage at Devon in late September and TerraNova in October. Either can lift riders up the board, push others below the line, and turn that tie into a clean cutoff or an even wider one.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a style="display: block;" href="https://www.usequestrianopen.org/categories/dressage" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img style="display: block; max-width: 100%; height: auto;" src="https://usef-admin.fly.dev/assets/df3afaab-1f25-4fab-a1dc-c46c608169fb" alt="Read more dressage" width="100%"></a></p>
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<div style="font-size: 26px; font-weight: 800; color: #83b1d6; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 4px; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">30th</div>
<div style="font-size: 11px; color: #6b7280; line-height: 1.35; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">US Equestrian Open of Dressage</div>
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<div style="font-size: 9px; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.14em; text-transform: uppercase; color: #6b7280; margin-bottom: 5px; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Series Points</div>
<div style="font-size: 26px; font-weight: 800; color: #001c54; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 4px; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">18</div>
<div style="font-size: 11px; color: #6b7280; line-height: 1.35; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Two of four scores counted</div>
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<div style="font-size: 26px; font-weight: 800; color: #001c54; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 4px; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2 / 4</div>
<div style="font-size: 11px; color: #6b7280; line-height: 1.35; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Devon and TerraNova remain</div>
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<div style="font-size: 26px; font-weight: 800; color: #001c54; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 4px; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">73.015%</div>
<div style="font-size: 11px; color: #6b7280; line-height: 1.35; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2025 MADFest Lexington, VA&nbsp;</div>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.72; color: #1a1a2e; margin: 0 0 16px 0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><strong style="font-weight: 600; color: #001c54;">Laine Ashker</strong> is chasing the US Equestrian Open in two disciplines at once, and she is the only rider doing it. In eventing she just claimed her first four-star win, at Maryland International, aboard <strong style="font-weight: 600; color: #001c54;">Lovedance</strong>, but she has ridden at the CCI five-star level too. In dressage, she competed at her first CDI5* at last year's Finals. She's trying to make it two for two with <strong style="font-weight: 600; color: #001c54;">Zeppelin</strong>, a Grand Prix horse she produced herself. Ask her if she's a dressage rider or an eventer and she says both.</p>
<p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.72; color: #1a1a2e; margin: 0 0 16px 0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">How she was seen used to bother her. The eventer who also does dressage. "If I'm gonna do dressage, I want to be a dressage rider doing dressage," she says. "And I want to be an eventing rider doing eventing." She has earned the right to draw that line. She has brought her own horses up to Grand Prix, and she has stood in a CDI arena across from <strong style="font-weight: 600; color: #001c54;">Isabell Werth</strong>.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 22px; font-weight: 800; line-height: 1.35; color: #001c54; margin: 0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Once you ride against Isabell Werth, then you can say that you're a dressage rider," she says. "I got my butt kicked, but I still rode against her."</p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.72; color: #1a1a2e; margin: 0 0 16px 0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Her entry into the dressage ring was an accident. Eighteen years ago a student posted an ad on Craigslist offering Laine's lessons. One person answered: an owner named <strong style="font-weight: 600; color: #001c54;">Ann Wilson</strong>, who had just bought a horse and wanted him produced in dressage. Laine thought the sport was rather boring and preferred to run and jump. But she took the horse from first level up the ranks anyway, lost badly the first time she tried the FEI levels, got rung out at her first CDI in Wellington when he put his tongue over the bit, but decided to keep going. She credits Wilson with her entire dressage career.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 22px; font-weight: 800; line-height: 1.35; color: #001c54; margin: 0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"I have to give my whole career, across the board, to Ann Wilson."</p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.72; color: #1a1a2e; margin: 0 0 16px 0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The two sports feed each other, and that is the part she finds most useful. Dressage gave her a more balanced canter, the kind she needs riding around the show jumping ring on day three or into a cross-country coffin at speed. Eventing gave her something a lot of dressage riders lack. "When someone tells me to ride forward, I can understand that," she says. One of her eventing coaches, <strong style="font-weight: 600; color: #001c54;">Philip Dutton</strong>, has actually helped her quite a bit on the flat. "Good training is good training across the board," she says. The result, in her eyes, is a better horsewoman in both rings.</p>
<p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.72; color: #1a1a2e; margin: 0 0 16px 0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Laine grew up in a recording studio, her mother a singer, her father writing the music, and classic rock is in her blood. As luck would have it, her Grand Prix horse came already carrying the name Zeppelin. So naturally, they ride to Led Zeppelin. <strong style="font-weight: 600; color: #001c54;">Terry Gallo</strong> built the freestyle and <strong style="font-weight: 600; color: #001c54;">Allie Brock</strong> coaches the work, and together they have set the degree of difficulty around what Zeppelin does best, the pirouettes and the piaffe, with swingier music written to lift a trot she calls average. This year she has raised the difficulty again. She strings together movements many riders keep separate, a pirouette into extended walk into a piaffe pirouette into a collected walk. Her personal best in the Grand Prix Freestyle is 73.015%, and the new floor plan is built to push it higher.</p>
<p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.72; color: #1a1a2e; margin: 0 0 16px 0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Zeppelin's got a cool head. He does not melt down under lights or noise, making him built for a freestyle atmosphere. That lets Laine do the thing the whole Open is built around, which is play to the crowd instead of managing the horse. "With Zeppy, I'm like, come on, clap with me," she says. It is also, she thinks, the way in for new fans. "If you don't know about dressage, it can be boring," she says.&nbsp;</p>
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<p style="font-size: 22px; font-weight: 800; line-height: 1.35; color: #001c54; margin: 0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"But the freestyles, you're allowed to bring your personality out, and it shows."</p>
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<p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.72; color: #1a1a2e; margin: 0 0 16px 0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Her window to the dressage final is narrow. Laine sits 30th in the standings with 18 points from two of her four counting scores. The top eighteen make the Final at Desert International Horse Park in November, nineteen if the cutline ends in a tie. Two qualifiers remain, Dressage at Devon in late September and TerraNova in October. As an East Coast-based rider, she has fairly easy access to both. With two clean results this fall, she stands a good chance at making the field.</p>
<p style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.72; color: #1a1a2e; margin: 0 0 16px 0; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">She covers the rest in the episode, the Maryland win, the Craigslist beginning, the affirmations that steadied her season, and a lot more on Zeppelin. Listen to <a style="color: #c8102e; font-weight: 600; text-decoration: none;" href="https://sites.libsyn.com/559710/lovedance-dual-threat-making-it-a-double-a-conversation-with-laine-ashker"><em>Lovedance, Dual Threat &amp; Making It a Double: A Conversation with Laine Ashker</em></a> on the US Equestrian Open Podcast.</p>

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<div style="font-size: 15px; font-weight: 800; color: #ffffff; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 14px; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Lovedance, Dual Threat &amp; Making It a Double: A Conversation with Laine Ashker</div>
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Podcast Feature: Laine Ashker on Zeppelin, the Freestyle, and Chasing the Open in Two Disciplines

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The Open Weekly: Olivia Dutton Takes Bronze and Natalie Dean Gets the Aachen Call Up

Back and Winning: Three Qualifier Victories Built on a Comeback

Podcast Feature: Laine Ashker on Zeppelin, the Freestyle, and Chasing the Open in Two Disciplines

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