July 24, 2024
By KENNETH J. BRADDICK
The United States Olympic dressage team along with those from 14 other nations and 15 individuals are completing preparations to move into historic Chateau Versailles in Paris in two days.
The defending silver medal team from the Tokyo Games has been based about 30 minutes from Versailles where two days of Grand Prix are scheduled for the last days of July to qualify the top 10 countries for the Grand Prix Special that will decide team medals on Saturday Aug. 3. Individual medals will be decided by the Grand Prix Freestyle on Sunday Aug. 4.
A total of 60 combinations, 15 teams each of three riders and 15 individuals, are scheduled to start in the Grand Prix.
The U.S. team is made up of Adrienne Lyle, 39, on Helix, a 12-year-old KWPN gelding (Apache x Jazz) owned by Zen Elite Equestrian Center, Marcus Orlob, 42, on Jane, 10-year-old KWPN mare (Desperado x Metall) owned by Alice Tarjan and Steffen Peters, 59, on Suppenkasper, 16-year-old KWPN gelding (Spielberg x IPS Krack C) owned by Four Winds Farm and Akiko Yamazaki.
Reserve is Endel Ots, 38, on Bohemian, a 14-year-old Westfalen gelding also owned by Zen Elite.
This will be the sixth Olympics for Steffen and the second for Mopsie, Suppenkasper’s barn name, whose Tokyo silver medal added to bronzes Steffen won on Udon in 1996 and on Legolas in 2016 to bring his Olympic total to three medals, behind only Robert Dover’s four bronzes.
For Adrienne, Paris is her third Olympics, the first on Wizard in London in 2012 and on Salvino on the most successful American team in modern dressage at Tokyo.
On Helix, it will be the first global championship for the pair that have been competing together for just four months, the result of successful Florida entrepreneur Heidi Humphries’ Zen Elite Equestrian Center stepping up to provide horses in place of mounts retired after Tokyo.
New to elite American competitors has been Marcus Orlob on Jane, the horse that was developed by Alice Tarjan who has built a reputation for an amazing ability to find horses through Internet searches that has filled her barn with team prospects for years to come.
Marcus, like Steffen a German migrant to the U.S., began international Big Tour competition on Jane just four months ago, first making it to a group of horses selected to compete in Europe for one of the three team slots then producing results that put the duo on the final squad.
The first U.S. team assignment for Marcus was at the World Equestrian Festival at Aachen, Germany the beginning of July. He and Jane had already been named to the U.S. team based on results in European competitions.
Endel and Bohemian, along with other reserves get to accompany the three team combinations to Versailles.The duo would replace a horse and rider on the team if forced out because of injury, illness or other ailment leading to withdrawal up to the time of the Grand Prix Special team competition.
The Americans have been in Europe since mid-May each with their own personal trainers as the U.S. does not have a team coach as in previous decades though chef d’equipe Christine Traurig is working with Steffen and Suppenkasper as well as coordinating operations.
“Helix and I have really grown together in our partnership during our time here,” said Adrienne who has been coached and mentored by Debbie McDonald for almost 20 years. Along with Laura Graves on Verdades and Kasey Perry-Glass on Dublet, she became widely admired and emulated for empathetic and quiet riding skills.
She said that taking over the ride on Helix, a horse that had been trained to Grand Prix by a different rider, “has definitely been a new type adventure, with its own unique set of challenges.
“And the fact that we really haven’t had that long to get to know each just speaks to what a good character Helix has. He is a horse that always tries so hard for his rider and he has been such a good sport about coming into a different training program and allowing me to change things about how he goes so that it can become more ‘my ride.’
“My first job was to learn to speak his language and understand him, then I’ve been able to slowly teach him more of my language.”
She has learned from competing Grand Prix on horses such as Wizard, Horizon, Duval, and Salvino.
“Each one of them was very unique and so it was great good practice for me to be able to work with so many different types (physically and mentally) of horses at that level,” she said. ” I have been training with Debbie McDonald for nearly 20 years now, and together we have a lot of experience that we have been able to utilize to make this relatively quick transition with Helix go smoothly.”
And heading to her third Olympics?
“I am very excited and just so grateful to be here! It is such an incredible honor to represent your country in an Olympic Games. Going to an Olympics is not something you set as a goal a few years before… it’s something that has been a goal and focus of my entire life and I am so thankful for every person who has supported me on this journey!”
The top 10 teams after the Grand Prix will move on to the Special.
All three scores for each team will count, so there is no drop score in the Grand Prix or the Special as in competitions such as the European Championships or the Pan American Games.
No individuals will compete in the Special.
Only the Freestyle counts towards the final individual medals and is open to the 18 combinations qualified from the Grand Prix.
The 18 combinations include the top two combinations from each of the six groups in the grand prix, plus the combinations with the six next highest overall scores.
If a combination drops out, the vacant spot is filled by the next highest-placed combination to fill the number of combinations allowed up to two hours before the start of the freestyle.
Each team has a traveling reserve combination.
A substitution may only be made during the period between the Grand Prix and up to two hours before the start of the Special.
There will be two horse inspections in Paris; the first before the Grand Prix. The second is before the Freestyle.