Following Canada's Equestrian Team

It’s Rio Time!

Hard to believe it was only 4 years ago when everyone flocked to London, England for the Olympics.

Athletes – both human and equine – are already landing on the shores of Rio de Janeiro to take part in history of the first Olympics ever to be held in South America.

The Opening Ceremonies will be held Friday August 5th at the famous Maracanã stadium. This is the same location where the 2007 Pan American Games opening ceremonies were held, and I can’t tell you what a memorable experience that was walking in the parade of nations. The roar of the crowd was like nothing I had ever heard before, and the sheer immenseness of the stadium was jaw-dropping. Our athletes who have the opportunity to experience this are going to carry that memory and feeling with them for a lifetime!

Our Canadian Eventers have now all safely landed in Rio with their horses, and will be settling in and familiarizing themselves with their surroundings so they can quickly get into a routine.

Our Dressage athletes will be hopping on a plane Monday so they can get to Rio ahead of their horses who are flying out of JFK, New York on Tuesday.

And you thought YOU packed a lot when you’re traveling!

Rebecca Howard and Riddle Master

Jessica Phoenix & her supergroom Sandra Andresen – Facebook

Olympic Athletes Village

The Eventing and Dressage athletes will be sharing an apartment in the Olympic Village, while their grooms will be staying at the venue in new Grooms Village accommodation that was specifically built for these Games. No more UN containers like the 2007 Pan Ams!

Of course anyone who has been to an Olympics knows that the word “routine” takes on a new meaning in a Games environment. Where you can walk one day may be blocked the next. You may breeze through the “mag and bag” (similar to airport security where your bags are checked & screened) today, and tomorrow be subjected to extremely thorough checks and screening.

So it’s always important to have a “go with the flow” attitude, and not get too hung up on the variables you can’t control.

The Canadian Olympic Committee always do a fabulous job in inserting lots of “Canadianism” into the Village, and making you feel very welcome.

Can you spot Team Canada’s building?

Canadian Swag

And how cool is the Canadian swag for these Games? Maybe not quite as psychedelic for the 2008 Bejing Games (few things could be!), but gotta love the hard case suitcase.

Deodoro Venue

The equestrian events are again being held at the Deodoro military compound, which is roughly 40 minutes from Rio itself. Thankfully the promised new highway has been finished and is operational, making transport far more direct from the Athlete Village to the venue.

The stabling is all new, and Canada finds themselves neighbours with the USA again – as we do quite often at Major Games. Although staunch competitors once inside the field of play, many of the athletes and support personnel from both countries are great friends so it makes for some fun times.

Jessica Phoenix & A Little Romance

Competition

While typically it’s Dressage who kick things off, these Games will be different in the sense that it is Eventing who is first on the schedule. Their Horse Inspection will take place August 5th, with the dressage competition taking place August 6th-7th followed by cross-country on the 8th and the final showjumping and medal ceremonies on the 9th.

Dressage doesn’t start until August 10th with the Grand Prix, so Belinda Trussell and Megan Lane will have plenty of time to fit in sightseeing.

Where the magic will happen…..

What it’s all about

And this is what all the hard work, sacrifice, pain, sweat, tears is about….

Dressage Teams Qualified for Rio

Masanao Takahashi and Fabriano clinched a qualifying spot at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games for Japan at the special Olympic Dressage qualifying competition staged in Perl, Germany
photo FEI

It can be a little confusing trying to figure out which dressage countries have punched their team ticket for Rio given the new formula for these Olympic Games.

The FEI’s qualification rules can be found here.

FEI Olympic Groups used in determining qualification quotas are:

• Group A (North Western Europe)
• Group B (South Western Europe)
• Group C (Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia)
• Group D (North America)
• Group E (Central and South America)
• Group F (Africa and the Middle East)
• Group G (South East Asia, Oceania)

WHO WILL BE COMPETING?

In total, there is a maximum of 60 athlete-horse combinations (10 teams plus 20 individuals plus 1 possible composite team) who will be cantering up the centreline in Rio.
As the host country, Brazil automatically will take 4 of those spots.  
The remaining countries who have qualified teams include:

• Germany, Great Britain, Netherlands (top three finishers at the 2014 World Equestrian Games)
• Spain, Sweden and France (top finishers at the 2015 European Championships excluding those countries already qualified)
• United States (top finisher at the 2015 Pan American Games)
• Australia (top ranked team from FEI  Groups F & G from 2014 World Equestrian Games)
• Japan (top ranked team from FEI Groups C, F & G at an FEI approved special qualification event which held at the Perl, Germany CDI2*)  bringing the total number of teams to 10.<br /><br />Along with those 10 teams, whose athletes take up 40 of the available spots, there are 20 starting places to be filled individually. If a country can qualify at least three athletes as individuals, they can join the team competition as a composite team of three or four.

20 Individuals

This will use the FEI Olympic Athlete Ranking list, which denotes a pre-determined list of qualifying FEI competitions where the best 4 results per athlete/horse combo between March 9, 2015 – March 6, 2016 is used.
This is organized as follows, and where the word “athlete” is used, it is actually the country whose athlete achieved the result (ie. it’s not  the athlete themselves who is guaranteed a ticket to Rio) :

1. 14 athletes according to the FEI Groups
   • Groups A, B, C (6 Quota places): The first and second place athlete in each Group on the FEI Olympic Athletes Ranking
   • Groups D, E (4 Quota places):  The first place athlete in each Group on the FEI Olympic Athletes Ranking INCLUDING the highest ranking athletes from the Grand Prix at the 2015 Pan American Games (which is Canada and Mexico)
   • Groups F & G (4 Quota places): The first place athlete on the FEI Olympic Athletes Ranking  INCLUDING the highest ranked athletes from the Grand Prix at the FEI special qualification event (Perl CDI2* which is South Africa & Korea)
2. 6 athletes from the best ranked in the FEI Olympic Ranking Athletes from countries who HAVE NOT already qualified an individual quota place for their FEI Group at the Pan Ams, Perl CDI2*, the FEI Olympic Ranking list above or who have qualified a team.

See the FEI Olympic Athlete Ranking list – updated as of August 31, 2015

Megan Lane & Caravella is the top Canadian in the overall FEI Olympic Athlete Ranking List, currently ranked 16th
photo Globe and Mail

And finally…..Composite Team
There is an opportunity for a non-qualified country to create a composite team (min of 3 to a max of 4 horse/rider combos).
This is determined by using the Individual Qualification mentioned above.

Wait, there’s more! Minimum Eligibility Requirements
Not to be forgotten, is the all important minimum eligibility requirements which must be achieved by all horse/rider combinations who are to compete at the Rio Olympics.
This means twice achieving a minimum of 64% in the Grand Prix at 2 different CDI3*, 4*, 5*, CDI-W, CDIO between January 1, 2015 and June 19, 2016.
This might be where Brazil falls short in being unable to form a complete team and could open the door to others.

Yes….that was as exhausting to type as it was to read.

As you can see from the above list, there are a number of dressage countries who are missing on the “already qualified” list including: Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland and of course Canada to name just a few.

The race for Rio is certainly not over, and it will be interesting to see both who can qualify a composite team as well as how the individual quota slots shake out.

Stay tuned!

Game On!

Yesterday was the first full day of competition for Reining, Dressage and Para-Dressage….and the heavens opened up to greet us with extremely watery & cold open arms.

But no way was that going to dampen people’s enthusiasm.

Tina and I spent the previous night working on our schedule for the next day. It goes without saying that trying to work with 3 different venues simultaneously is a sport onto itself.

Sadly, we couldn’t foresee the traffic accident that happened on our way into Caen, which meant that we missed our first Reining athlete by about 5 minutes. But chef Lyne was able to fill us on on what we missed, which was a solid run by Josiane Gauthier who was the trailblazer for the Canadian Reining Team. Thankfully we did get to see Lisa Coulter’s run in the afternoon. With the exception of a slight bobble at the very start, Lisa also looked very solid.

Next it was packing everything off, running to the car in the rain to get to dressage venue where David Marcus was busy preparing. We had already heard of Karen Pavicic’s personal best that morning, so spirits were certainly maintaining the high that Dressage has had since their training camp.

After finding our “herd” in the National Federation seating section, it was a bit unnerving to see just how much water was sitting on the surface of the footing in the main competition stadium. And I think it may have actually started to rain a wee bit hard when David and Chrevi’s Capital emerged from the “chute”.

But any butterflies we have had quickly vanished when he started his warm-up around the ring. The pair looked completely at ease and laser-focused on the task at hand. Although it’s unfortunate they had that break in the extended trot, it was so fantastic to see that it didn’t seem to phase either David or “Capi”. They completely shrugged off that one mistake, and got their head back into the game immediately….the irrefutable sign that they contenders on the world stage.

Sadly we had to then leave dressage once David’s ride was done to make our way onto our next stop – Para Dressage.

We were greeted in the stable area by the ever lovely Roberta Sheffield who were the pathfinders in the morning. Roberta filled us in on her ride, and we then made our way to the main competition area so we could watch Ashley Gowanlock.

The rain was still coming down, and I have to admit that it surprises me that the FEI don’t mandate that Para competitions at the international level must take place in a covered arena (like Reining and Vaulting). Not that it slowed down Ashley, who put in a lovely elegant test.

what an awesome companion horse…..looks like he was studying the entire test

There definitely were a few surprises while at Para. One being the seating area…..which is essentially sitting on hard concrete blocks. The other was hearing the solution to helping drainage in the warm-up rings (which were quickly gather water). While some Para athletes were training, some venue volunteers fired up chainsaws to make holes in the ring sideboards. Yes. That’s right. Chainsaws right beside the Para riders. All I can say is those Para athletes are fierce!! I can’t even imagine the fall-out had that happened at the Dressage or Eventing venue 🙂

With all the rides done for the day, Tina and I were looking forward to finally grabbing something to eat before attending the 8:00pm Chef de Mission meeting. That’s when we learned a very valuable lesson. Restaurants in Caen don’t open until 6:30pm or even 7:00pm. Anywhere. And we drove, and drove and drove around Caen. Given that we only a baguette several hours earlier, we were famished. And cold. And wet. Suffice to say we were generally very disheveled with stomachs grumbling. After driving around town, we gave in and simply drove to our meeting area to forage for whatever we could find in our knapsacks.

It did however give us the opportunity to chat with some of the Organizing Committee Accreditation folks, who finally have some breathing space now that the first initial crunch of team arrivals are over. And our package of cookies (that I was excited to find in one of my many bags) was a great hit with other Chefs de Mission who arrived early and likewise also hadn’t eaten. Lesson of the day: Make sure to work in restaurant opening times into our daily schedule! (and pick up a carton of cookies to keep in the car)

And on that bombshell….. till the next blog.

Go Canada!

our reward after a long, cold, rainy day

Storming the Beaches

I can’t believe 5 days have already flown by and this is my first blog post.

I was hopeful that today would finally be the day where I could steal a few moments and write up a terrific first post. Instead, it’s 1 am and I’m only managing to write a few words so I can grab a few hours sleep before another busy day.

The first few days are always very hectic as we get ourselves oriented, pick up all our materials, and chase down anything which is missing/not set up/ promised but not yet delivered / not what we anticipated. Let’s just say that while having a Plan A is very important….it’s equally important to have a Plan B, C and D.

Tina and I are excited for our teams and their first day of competition. So I’ll leave you with a few photos and the promise of a proper blog post tomorrow.

our “cozy” room for the next 21 days. Good thing Tina & I get along really well!

Canada goodie bags

boxed dinners before opening ceremonies nation parade

getting herded to the big stadium

Leanna (Endurance) & Josiane (Reining) are the trailblazers for Canada.

time in the big ring for dressage

Excited team members!

love the sign

I can hardly wait until cross-country day !!