Enter the Golden Age of US Para-Dressage

Team USA wins historic first gold Paralympic Games para-dressage medal at Paris 2024

By Kim MacMillan
Photos by Sarah Miller/MacMillan Photography

About a decade ago, the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) Sports Disciplines Department put together a master plan to support development of the sport of para-dressage in the US. This week at the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games, it’s been obvious that the plan has paid off in spades.

First, US athletes Rebecca Hart on Floratina and Fiona Howard on Diamond Dunes won individual gold medals in their respective grades; Roxanne Trunnell on Fan Tastico H won an individual silver; and Kate Shoemaker on Vianne finished fifth in her grade.

Then today, September 6, the three riders selected to compete for the team medals—Hart, Howard, and Trunnell—won the USA’s first-ever Paralympic dressage team gold medal. Their team total score of 235.567 was higher than that posted by the top team at the Tokyo Paralympics three short years ago.

The FEI world-ranked #1 para-dressage team in the world coming into Paris 2024, as of today Team USA remains undefeated in 2024.

Sixteen nations fielded teams of three riders each at the spectacular equestrian venue at the storied Palace of Versailles. Each horse-and-rider combination performed their grade’s FEI Grand Prix Test B, with the highest team total score determining the medals.

The first US rider to go down center line was three-time Paralympian Trunnell and Fan Tastico H, a seven-year-old Oldenburg gelding owned by Karin Flint and cared for by Rafael Hernandez-Carillo. Watching them walk a solid Grade I test to a score of 77.00%, one would not guess that Trunnell and her young mount have competed together only since March.

“I just really concentrated on him marching,” Trunnell said afterward of her test with “Fanta.” “He’s so cool at only seven; it’s just going to get better and better. I think it’s all Michel [Assouline, the team chef d’équipe]. He got us in shape. He’s very strict. I think all his experience has helped us.”

Next up for the USA in the 16,000-seat temporary stadium was team rookie Fiona Howard, also on a new mount, the 11-year-old Hanoverian gelding Diamond Dunes, owned by Dressage Family LLC and Hof Kasselmann and cared for by Helen Claire McNulty. Their Grade II team test was magical to watch—a flowing performance that garnered an impressive collection of 7s, 8s and 9s and collective marks ranging from 8 to 10. When the score flashed on the board, it read 80.00%—making the pair the first (and thus far the only) para-dressage competitors here in any grade to break that barrier. The score was a personal best for Howard, as well.

“As soon as we started the first trot—even just trotting around the ring—I really was like, ‘He feels really good,’ Howard said afterward. “I went in there and I remembered what my team said: ‘Just trust him.’ What a feeling when you can just trust your horse. He kept giving and giving. At the end, my muscles were really tired. I just was like, ‘Keep going, buddy!’, and he was like, ‘I’ve got you.’ He’s incredible; he’s amazing.”

The anchor rider for the USA was five-time Paralympian Hart on Floratina, a 16-year-old Hanoverian mare owned by Rowan O’Riley and cared for by Mackenzie Young. The pair has been competing together for about a year; three days ago, they won the Grade III individual gold medal, which was Hart’s first Paralympic gold.

The pair had to up their game, entering the ring immediately after the Netherlands’ Rixt van der Horst on Royal Fonq earned a score of 78.067%. Hart admitted afterward to glancing at van der Horst’s marks as she rode into the arena and realizing that she needed to post a higher score than she’d ever received before in order to top the Dutch rider. She and “Flora” rose to the challenge, earning a score of 78.567% and clinching the gold for Team USA.

“It still feels surreal,” said Hart. Winning team gold “was the culmination of years and years and years of work, and I am so wildly proud of all these girls because it’s been a group effort to get this done. It wouldn’t have happened without each one of us putting our best foot forward out there.”

(Fun fact: Before partnering with Hart, Flora had been a part of the gold-medal-winning Canadian team with rider Lindsay Kellock at the 2019 Pan American Games. She may possibly be the only horse to have won a major games gold medal with both a para-athlete and an able-bodied athlete.)

The Trainer and Chef Behind the Success

Much of US para-dressage’s current success is attributed to Michel Assouline, whom USEF hired in 2017 as its head of para-equestrian coach development and high-performance consultant, and who now serves as its US para-dressage chef d’équipe and technical advisor. More than a dozen years before, Assouline fashioned the British para-dressage team into an international powerhouse. A graduate of the French National Equestrian School (home of the Cadre Noir in Saumur), he worked to set up USEF/United States Para-Equestrian Association Para Centers of Excellence—training facilities for developing coaches and riders.

The USA’s success at Paris 2024, Assouline said, “is the completion of a long-timed, well-planned dream going back to Tryon 2018 [the FEI World Equestrian Games], where we started to actually make changes. In Tokyo, when we won [team] bronze, I had a clear plan and strategy in place. It was in my mind to earn that team medal. I just knew it had to be gold in Paris for us.

“It has been three years of very hard work, planning, logistics, and competition strategies, both for Europe and in the US,” Assouline continued. “The horsepower, the coaches, and the whole program had to be revamped to get to this point. It’s a funny thing to think: It’s what I expected, but you never want to talk about it openly. I had it in mind that this was our goal, and here we are. This feels like such an amazing accomplishment for everyone who has been involved with this program over the years.”

Hart said she hopes the US team’s success in France will spur recognition and support for para-equestrian athletes. “What I’m really, really hoping for para,” she said, “is the recognition and the equality of the multiple disciplines within our federations—and the realization that we are valuable and we can deliver when we need to. I think that will help just grow the sport more, bring in more sponsors and horses and people. That is what I’m hoping for, looking toward the future.”

Following the medal ceremony, the US team riders (and Shoemaker, who also qualified) said they planned a little rest before turning their focus to tomorrow’s individual freestyle tests. The freestyle competition runs from 9:30 a.m. – 4:45 p.m. CET, followed by medal ceremonies for each of the five para-dressage grades. For orders of go and results, go to https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024-paralympics/reports/para-equestrian/all-event.