Top 5 placings for the Intermediare I  

1          Leslie Reid                   Canada               73.7
2          Bernadette Pujals          Mexico               70.75
3          Cesar Parra                  Columbia             69.45
4          Ivonne Muniz                 Dom.Republic         69.4
5          Pierre St.Jacques          USA                   68.45  

Top 5 Placings going into the Freestyle (combination of PSG and I-1 scores)

1          Leslie Reid                   Canada                         145.85
2          Ivonne Muniz                Dom.Republic                   141.20
3          Bernadette Pujals          Mexico                         140.60
4          Cesar Parra                  Columbia                      138.95
5          Jan Ebeling                   USA                             138.15

Music problems made it hard to watch and follow the first nine rides.  Audience chatter (and it was packed) made it impossible to hear, and probably was conducive to raising the level of spectator noise since it was impossible to follow anyway.  It was a great pity as I am sure the organizers went to great lengths to promote the musical freestyle as being spectator friendly. The reserved seating area was full to capacity and even the bleachers were full. Fortunately, they finally solved the problem halfway through Pierre St. Jacques’ ride and from then on everyone enjoyed the last five rides and the chatter magically stopped.    

Leslie Reid (1^{st –}  76.25%) of Canada had an awesome freestyle and was the deserved winner. Her horse was so “on” the music and they demonstrated the same technical ability as her winning rides in the Prix St. Georges and Intermediare I.  Bernadette Pujals (2^{nd –} 72.8%) of Mexico was also outstanding on her lovely chestnut Hanoverian stallion, Vincent, as was Cesar Parra (4^{th   -} 71.025%) on the Hanoverian stallion, Pik L.  In third place with 71.15% was Carol Lavell for the USA on Much Ado.  Unfortunately, being 6^th to go, I didn’t hear her freestyle music, so cannot make any comment. 

When all the scores were averaged, the top five individual placings were as follows:  

Gold     Leslie Reid                   Canada              222.10
Silver    Bernadette Pujals           Mexico               213.40
Bronze  Ivonne Muniz                  Dom.Republic      212.00
4th       Cesar Parra                  Columbia            209.975
5th       Jan Ebeling                   USA                  206.750  

There was much pomp and ceremony for awarding the medals, uniformed chaps slowly raised each nation’s flags as the riders stepped up on the Olympic style podium and received their medals with all manner of local, FEI, and Olympic dignitaries in attendance. When all was accomplished and all three medalists winners were on the podium with their medals, flowers, etc , they raised the Canadian flag and… played the US National Anthem!   Oops!  They did find the Canadian anthem and play it though.  Leslie’s freestyle music was played during the victory gallop, which I thought was a nice touch.   

I finally did get my pass to the barn - or should I say Kevin did. (He obviously had more pull with cute girls running the computer than I). So was able to make one more pass by the barn and tell Wradar I'd see him at the farm in a week or so.

The Dominican Republic Equestrian Federation threw a big party at the hotel that night and can those Latin Americans dance!   George Fernandez, one of the DR riders stole the floor dancing with Mariette Witthages as did Cesar Parra and his partner.  

Many of the riders had to leave the party early to get their horses ready for transportation. All the dressage horses were flying home the next day, starting  around 1.00am the next morning. Apparently there are only four horse trailers available and it’s a 3 hour round trip to the airport, so it would take a while to get them all out. (I can’t even imagine trying to haul a trailer through these city streets – I hope there’s a different road to the ones I’ve been on!) It was okay when the horses arrived, as they all arrived at different times over several days, however, ALL of them were leaving Monday, and the show jumpers were arriving. I was concerned that Wradar would miss his flight, but Lena assured me its not possible to miss an Amerijet flight – they are always late!   

My other concern was the bridge that had to be crossed to get in and out of the equestrian center. It is one car wide and every time we had crossed it over the last week, more of it had fallen through to the creek below.   

All being well, Wradar flies out at 10.20am to Miami and then, after 7 or 8 days quarantine – back to Oklahoma . I can’t wait to have him home.  He deserves a vacation – it will have been weeks since he had any turnout. I am so thankful that Lena arranged for Ruth Ann to be his groom and that she will be flying with him.(Check out the article about RuthAnn published in the Horse Care Issue of the Chronicle of the Horse on July 18th and visit her website: www.luckybraids.com)

In conclusion – it has been fun to be part of this international competition and to have the opportunity to help Barbados field their first Pan Am Team. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!  There were a lot of “firsts” on this occasion and hopefully we all learned a lot and will have the opportunity to put our lessons to good use in future international competitions, wherever they may be.   Special thanks again to Lena Wedenmark, Akoela Roachford and Ruth Ann Smith for taking such good care of Wradar while he was in your charge.  

For more results and anything you want to know about dressage go to:
Dressage un Ltd. | Dressage.com