With his World Equestrian Games debut as the New Zealand Eventing High Performance Manager, Graeme Thom is looking forward to seeing how the week plays out for his team of established veterans. Named as the High Performance Manager in 2017, the Canadian-born eventer says that this group “is the best group of people I’ve ever met in my entire life.” As for the competition, Graeme is excited to see how the new short-course format in cross-country will pan out.
"I went to the 2006 WEG in Aachen, but this is a different level as far as cross-country goes – it’s a shorter course so we’ll see how that plays out. It is going to level the playing field quite a bit. If you go back in the past 40 years, there’s only
Just two weeks shy of the ten-year anniversary of their first horse trials together, Lynn Symansky and her off-track Thoroughbred Donner will canter down centerline at the Tryon International Equestrian Center representing USA at the World Equestrian Games.
They’ve come a long way in those ten years and this won’t be the first time Lynn wears her pinque coat on the world stage. She and Donner (Gorky Park x Smart Jane) - affectionately known as ‘The Deer’ - were first called up from the reserve list to compete in the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara. Under pressure to qualify for the London Olympics, Team USA won gold in Mexico. In 2014, Lynn and Donner were named to the team for WEG in Normandy, where USA failed to finish with a team score. Will USA taste sweet redemption in Tryon?