Versailles, France—July 30

Marcus Orlob, the first U.S. rider in the ring for dressage at the Paris Olympic Games, has been eliminated. Judges stopped his test during the canter zig-zag. 

The mare had blood on her leg, Orlob said, speculating that she might have interfered and hit it with the other leg as they entered the arena and she reacted to seeing the crowds for the first time.

“I was happy, excited to go down centerline; clearly Jane [was] too,” he said. “It was a little bit of a, I would say, explosive entry. I believe she may have nicked herself in the entry, because I never had this issue. She felt in the ring amazing. I was super happy with her. Once she went down centerline, she settled nicely.”

“It’s the beginning, the crowd, that’s where she gets nervous,” he added. “And then once I got going, she felt more and more relaxed. I was really happy. I said, ‘OK, I got this now.’ And then I was, like, really, really sad to hear the bell, because I knew something’s not right.”  

Orlob described the mare’s injury as a very small cut, “almost like a mosquito bite,” but rules require elimination for any blood on a horse.

“Now we showered her, washed her off and there’s nothing to see anymore,” he said. “She’s happy, she’s healthy. It’s all good; it was just bad luck to happen. Unfortunately, that’s our sport.”

The Fédération Equestre Internationale issued a statement after Orlob’s elimination affirming his explanation that Jane hit herself just before entering the ring, and that the resulting cut on the right hind began to bleed during the test, leading the judge to ring him out under FEI rules for dressage, which require a horse to be stopped if the the judge at C suspects fresh blood on anywhere on its body during the test, and the rider eliminated if a subsequent examination confirms that.

“Elimination under this rule does not imply that there was any intention to hurt or harm the horse, but the FEI discipline rules have been put in place to ensure that horse welfare is protected at all time,” the statement read.

The other U.S. pairs, Steffen Peters on Suppenkasper and Adrienne Lyle on Helix, will now compete as individuals in the Grand Prix test.