Team USA

LUCY DAVIS, KENT FARRINGTON, MCLAIN WARD, BEEZIE MADDEN

WINNERS OF THE 2016 RIO OLYMPIC GAMES

SHOW JUMPING TEAM SILVER MEDAL

Individual Silver in competed as an Eventer

All In.

1992 Barcelona

Games and as a Show Jumper in

Games. 2. Four years after winning Team Gold in London, Nick Skelton (GBR), at age 58, is the first Brit to bring home Individual Gold in Show Jumping. He did so after two perfect rounds and a six horse jump-off on the superb stallion Big Star. 3. After four decades of not standing at the top of the podium, Team France – Roger Yves-Bost, Penelope Leprevost, Kevin Staut, Philippe Rozier – gallantly earned Gold. Starting the second day in 5th place with 1 time fault, in three rounds they added only 2 additional time faults, taking the lead with no fourth round needed. France also won Team Gold in Eventing. 4. Lucy Davis (USA) and Barron brought home a Silver Medal in their Olympic debut. 5. Eric Lamaze (CAN) is all smiles after piloting Fine Lady 5 to Individual Bronze. Deciding she would be his Olympic mount last December, Lamaze carefully brought the mare along, and it paid off. 6. McLain Ward (USA) aboard the phenomenal mare HH Azur. A dynamic duo that is just beginning a winning relationship. This page and opposite: All Photos © Diana De Rosa

Rio de Janeiro, BrazilExcitement lled the air as the nal day of dressage got underway at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Deodoro Olympic Equestrian Center on Monday. The top 18 competitors from eight nations competed in the Grand Prix Freestyle, the deciding competition for the Individual medals. Only three athletes from each nation were eligible to compete. After winning the Bronze medal with teammate Kasey Perry-Glass on Friday, Steffen Peters, Alison Brock, and Laura Graves entered the sun- https://horsesdaily.com/article/rio-olympics-2016-laura-graves-leads-us-dressage-individual-final

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BRONZE!

Team USA breaks 12-year drought with 2016 Olympic dressage medal

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For thefirst timesinceAthens 2004,

Team USA breaks 12-year drought with 2016 Olympic dressage medal

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPH S BY DIANA DE ROSA

In 2013, when six-time Olympian Robert Dover was named chef d’équipe of the US dressage team, he wrote a 58-page plan for winning international medals that he famously called his “road map to the podiums.” On August 8, Dover’s road map reached its destination when Team USA—Steffen Peters and Legolas 92, Laura Graves and Verdades, Kasey Perry-Glass and Dublet, and Allison Brock and Rosevelt—stood on the bronze-medal podium at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

The US riders finished behind the gold medalists (Germany) and silver medalists (Great Britain) with scores that were so close it could have been anyone’s day. Germany’s final overall score of 81.936 percent was fewer than four percentage points ahead of the British, who finished on 78.595. Team USA had a final overall tally of 76.667 percent.

In Rio, the dressage team competition comprised the Grand Prix and the Grand Prix Special. When both scores were tallied for each rider, Perry-Glass totaled 73.235 percent, Brock 73.824, Peters 74.522, and Graves 80.644.

The individual results, although no US rider medaled, were equally as impressive. Riding her own Verdades, Graves finished in fourth place. The judges rewarded her Grand Prix Freestyle with one of her highest-ever scores at 85.196, mere fractions from the bronze-medal-winning score of 87.142 earned by Germany’s Kristina Broring-Sprehe on Desperados FRH. The individual silver went to Broring-Sprehe’s countrywoman Isabell Werth on Weihegold OLD (89.071), who with that medal—her ninth—became the most successful Olympic equestrian in history.

Even with the Germans in top form, there was no touching the pair that has dominated dressage since they won double gold in London 2012. Great Britain’s Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro, who won individual gold in London on 90.089 percent, set a new Olympic dressage record in Rio. Their Latin-themed GP Freestyle earned a score of 93.857. The performance, which reduced Dujardin to tears afterward, was all the more poignant for the knowledge that this was “Blueberry’s” final competition; the Dutch Warmblood gelding will be officially retired next month in a ceremony at the CDI-W Olympia in London.

The Long Journey to Rio

For Team USA, the bronze medal was a long time in coming; our nation’s last Olympic dressage medal, also team bronze, was in Athens 2004.

If it was a long wait for US dressage fans, it was nearly half a lifetime for Peters, who was 31 when he won his only previous Olympic dressage medal—team bronze at Atlanta 1996, aboard Udon. Peters wasn’t on the team for Sydney 2000 or Athens 2004, and in Hong Kong 2008 and London 2012 he and his teammates went home empty-handed.

“I have been waiting for this team medal for twenty years,” said a teary-eyed Peters, 52, of San Diego, CA. “USA dressage has been waiting for this for twelve years. At my age you ask yourself that question: When is the time when