Hi all,

I am getting these updates every day from one of the grooms for the Canadian team. Here's today's update!

If you may not have heard, the Dutch team won gold today in the team competition, British team second and the German team came in third place. Totilas was AMAZING to watch up close. The Rolex stadium has screen's set up where each movement's marks from the judges come up immediately. The crowd was in awe when we saw 10's come up for Totilas. Equally impressive was Laura Bechtolsheimer from Great Britain coming only 2% behind Gal and Totilas. The shock of the day however was Adelinde Cornelissen who was eliminated after the halt rein-back movement when the judges saw blood coming from Parcival's mouth.

Ok and finally the Canadians! Bonny went first on Pikardi and laid down very impressive movements, even getting 9's from some judges. Sadly though Pikardi having a mind of his own, gave out for the first 2 piaffe's and even threw in little rears to show how dissatisfied he was! Her last piaffe down centreline however was gorgeous. Bonny ended up with a 65.447% which is very impressive considering the 2 mistakes. We are very proud of her in her last competition as well!
Ashley and Poppy went near the end of the day and also laid down an amazing test. It was a treat to watch Ashley in the show ring, because we had so much confidence in her. Her and Poppy have been in the ring so many times together and we could count on her pulling a score over 70%...and she did with a 70.383%.

Now onto the special tomorrow. I will try and explain how the rest of the dressage works...
-the top 30 rider's from the 2 day team competition move onto the grand prix special Wednesday
-the order of go depends on your results from the grand prix, so reverse order of go from lowest score to highest. BUT there are groups of 5 depending on your score and within that group of 5 you draw an order. For example, rider's placed 25th-30th will be the first to go tomorrow, but within that group they will draw to find an order. Then the 20-25th place rider's will do the same, and so forth. Saying that we think Belinda will go after 11am but are still waiting to hear on a time.
-the top 15 from the special go onto the freestyle on Friday. BUT only 2 rider's from each nation can compete in the freestyle.

I will try and update tomorrow but it will be a busy day! Send out good vibes into the universe for Belinda and Anton tonight, I really want to see them dance under the lights on Friday!
Sarah