Sweden’s Louise Romeike has given her nation’s chances a boost in the Olympic eventing dressage phase as the second session of the competition wrapped up at the Tokyo Games today (30 July).
Riding Cato 60, who is owned by Louise and her parents-in-law Hinrich – who was a former Olympic eventing champion – and Susanne Romeike, the pair scored a very creditable 28, which puts them into provisional seventh place. Her score also means that the Swedish team are in second place at the moment, almost seven penalties behind Great Britain, but there are still four other team riders to go before the end of the second rider rotation.
“It’s amazing to be here and to be able to ride in this amazing arena – it’s so beautiful,” Louise said after her test. “Overall being here, riding at the Olympics with my amazing horse is just really, really cool.”
Phillip Dutton and Z, from the United States, scored 30.5, which puts them into provisional 11th. But their test split the judges, with one judge putting them into seventh and the other two putting them into 15th and 18th respectively.
“I was really pleased with my horse – I would have liked to get a bit of a better score but at the end of the day, my horse went really well and did what I asked,” Phillip said afterwards.
“If I had to categorise him it would be as a hot horse, but he’s getting more and more seasoned and more and more trained, so I was pretty proud of him actually. Performing under the lights, even though there’s no crowd, he still had to go in there and it’s a different situation with a lot to look at and he stayed really in tune with me.”
Australia’s Kevin McNab, who was a late call-up to the team following the withdrawal of Stuart Tinney’s Leporis, scored 32.1 with Don Quidam, which is enough to put them into 17th place at the moment.
“It was a little bit unsettled and I didn’t quite get the still halts I wanted and I think those were quite costly mistakes,” Kevin explained afterwards. “So I didn’t quite get the score that I’d hoped, but it’s an honour to be able to represent my country and hopefully we will pick it up along the way.”
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