Team USA Accepted in Final Horse Inspection
Forty-seven horses were listed on the order of go for the second horse inspection, including Boyd Martin’s Blackfoot Mystery and Phillip Dutton’s Mighty Nice. One, Just Chocolate, from Japan was not presented for inspection. Of the 46 that did present, three were held, but accepted upon re-inspection: Cooley Rorkes Drift of Ireland (ridden by Jonty Evans); The Duke of Cavan of Japan (ridden by Yoshiaki Oiwa), and Mighty Nice of the U.S.A. (ridden by Phillip Dutton).
There were some tense moments for the U.S. team as they worked to prepare Mighty Nice (a.k.a. Happy) in the hold box. Perhaps he did look a bit tired or was too laid back in his jog on first inspection. Whether these things were a factor in the ground jury sending him to the hold box is not known. But in the end, Happy was cleared to jump this afternoon and that’s all that counts.
The rest of the horses passed on first presentation and no horses were spun from the competition due to the inspection. The stadium jumping is underway now, with medal ceremonies for individual and teams at the end of the day and one final eventing press conference.
Overnight there was a change in the results after cross-country due to protests from the Brazilian and Swedish teams who each lost riders to technical refusals. Though we are not sure as the technical delegate has not made appearance to explain the protests, here is what we think they protested. Yesterday there were many horse/rider combinations who took out the fence flags as they jumped over obstacles. The jump judges or ground jury must determine that the horse’s shoulders remained inside the flags, despite if the rest of their body does not. Brazilian rider Marcio Carvalho Jorge was initially assessed 20 penalties for missing a flag in the final water, but won his appeal to have those penalties removed. This caused changes to the results in both the individual and team standings, although it did not affect the U.S. riders left in the competition (Boyd Martin and Phillip Dutton) or change the fact that our team had been eliminated.
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