Bloody Hell!

USA out of Paris 2024 Olympic dressage team competition after Orlob eliminated

Text and photographs by Jennifer O. Bryant

FEI rules have a zero-tolerance policy for blood on horses in dressage competition. Judges must stop competitors if they think they see fresh blood (and eliminate if their suspicions are confirmed), just as riders are eliminated if stewards find fresh blood during their immediate post-test inspections.

Understandable, but also crushing when an apparently trivial boo-boo results in your team’s being out of the running for Olympic medals. That’s what happened today, July 30, when head judge Susanne Baarup of Denmark rang the bell during Team USA member Marcus Orlob’s test aboard Alice Tarjan’s 2014 KWPN mare, Jane (by Desperado).

Turns out Jane’s pre-test efforts to get out of Dodge rather than march into the noisy, electric Versailles stadium likely resulted in the mare’s clipping the inside of her right hind fetlock. She’s a black mare with white socks, and the cut began to bleed during what was shaping up to be a lovely Grand Prix test, so of course it was as visible as a billboard.

“Unfortunately that’s our sport,” Orlob said afterward. He expressed thankfulness that Jane seemed absolutely fine, calling the tiny cut little more than a mosquito bite.

It was the first Olympic appearance for the German-born Bereiter FN Orlob, 42, of Loxahatchee, Florida, an up-and-coming rider whom the US Equestrian Federation undoubtedly hopes will be on more teams in the future.

On this first of two days of Grand Prix dressage competition, the other US combination that went down center line was now three-time Olympian Adrienne Lyle on a very new mount, Helix, a 2012 KWPN gelding by Apache owned by Zen Elite Equestrian Center (they’ve been together only since January). Trained to Grand Prix by Swedish rider Marina Mattsson, Helix was purchased as an international contender for Lyle, and they’ve bonded quickly. Lyle had to do some hand-holding to reassure her big-eyed mount that the stadium was OK, and then the striking chestnut laid down an error-free test to earn a score of 72.593%, which satisfied the rider’s goal of equaling the scores they’d earned in the Olympic qualifying competitions.

Lyle enthused that Helix has “super talent for the collected work, for piaffe-passage. He’s got a very good character, too, and for both those reasons I’m very excited for the future.” She affectionately called Helix a “goofball,” calling the gelding an “in your pocket” type that bangs on the door to go to work when he sees someone coming with a saddle. “He’s very active in his brain at all times; he likes to be engaged,” she said.

At the same time, “My heart just broke for him [Orlob],” Lyle said. “That’s such an incredible horse, and he rode so beautifully. To be having such a wonderful ride and then hear the bell ring, we were all a little confused at first. Hopefully they left a nice impression on everybody, to see what they’re capable of. But then I had to put it out of my head and not let it affect my ride with Helix. He is very sensitive to your energy as a person. If you’re upset or you’re mad or your sad, he definitely picks up on that, and it’s my job to protect him.”

These Olympic Games have a three-member dressage team format, and therefore Orlob’s elimination means that there is no US team. Lyle and Steffen Peters on Suppenkasper, who compete tomorrow, still can vie to qualify for the Grand Prix Freestyle individual medal final August 4, but no US pair will ride the Grand Prix Special on August 3 because it’s solely the team medal final. And as of now, it’s questionable whether Lyle will make the cut because she did not clinch a qualifying berth by placing in the top two (she finished third) in her group today. In the Grand Prix competition format, the 60 pairs are divided into six groups of 10. The top two in each group secure a slot in the Freestyle as individuals. The riders with the six next best scores also qualify—so, since Lyle didn’t qualify within her group, she has to hope her score gets her in as one of the six next best.

The top three individual scorers from Grand Prix day 1 were Denmark’s Nanna Skodborg Merrald on Zepter (78.028%), the Netherlands’ Dinja van Liere on Hermes (77.764), and Great Britain’s Carl Hester on Fame (77.345). After day 1, Team Denmark is leading Great Britain and Sweden—but there’s another 30 combinations set to go tomorrow, so don’t start drawing conclusions just yet!