Germany’s Isabell Werth, the defending champion and three-time winner, has three of the top four horses in the world rankings and is unlikely to hand over her crown without a serious fight.

In the number two spot, she has the 13-year-old mare Weihegold with which she claimed her second consecutive title at the FEI Dressage World Cup Final in Paris earlier this year.

Weihegold also carried her to triple gold at the 2017 FEI European Championships, and team gold and individual silver at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Added to that are Werth's world number three ride, Emilio, who is extremely consistent, and her personal favourite Bella Rose, who is in number four spot and who helped secure team gold and the Grand Prix Special title at the FEI World Equestrian Games in Tryon in the United States last month.

With the freestyle competition cancelled in Tryon due to weather conditions, there are unanswered questions about whether the world number one partnership of the US’s Laura Graves and Verdades would have pushed the German duo, and how much of a challenge would have been presented by Great Britain’s Charlotte Dujardin and Mount St John Freestyle.

At just nine years of age, Dujardin’s incredibly exciting mare looks to have a bright future ahead of her.

The highest-ranked rider in Herning will be Germany’s Helen Langehanenberg, the 2013 FEI World Cup champion.

She’s currently eighth in the world with the 16-year-old stallion Damsey FRH, who along with Weihegold was also on Germany’s gold medal-winning European team in 2017.

Others to look out for this weekend include European team silver medallists Agnete Kirk Thinggaard and Anna Kasprzak of Denmark, and seven-time Olympian Tinne Vilhelmson Silfven and Rose Mathisen, who were on the European bronze medal-winning Swedish side 14 months ago.

The Grand Prix is scheduled for tomorrow and will be followed by the freestyle competition on Sunday (October 21).

After this weekend’s first leg, action moves on to Lyon, Stuttgart and Madrid in November, and then to Salzburg, London and Mechelen in December. 

The new year will begin with an event in Amsterdam and it will then be a race to the line with just two more chances to pick up those precious qualifying points in Neumunster and ’s-Hertogenbosch in February.

The FEI Dressage World Cup Final is due to take place in Gothenburg from April 3 to 7, 2019.