Debbie McDonald, Adrienne Lyle, Kasey Perry-Glass Help Restore Support for USA Top Sport
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June 30, 2024
By KENNETH J. BRADDICK
During the years from 2014 through 2021 often described as the golden, silver at least, era of American dressage, performances were almost always supported in person by pretty much anyone and everyone wearing Stars ‘n’ Stripes, displays boosting riders rarely seen by other nations.
Who knows how much it impacted riders like Laura Graves on her Verdades as the only American ever ranked No. 1 in the world, Adrienne Lyle on Salvino and Steffen Peters on Suppenkasper at both the Tokyo Olympics and 2018 Tryon World Equestrian Games silver medal teams, Kasey Perry-Glass on Dublet earning Olympic bronze and WEG silver, Sabine Schut-Kery on Sanceo at Tokyo, Allison Brock on Rosevelt at Rio de Janeiro.
Then came retirements of top horses. Sixth place at the World Championships in 2022 was good enough to qualify a team for the Paris Games but appeared a precursor for immediate future results–out of the top tier. Development of youngsters to future team prospects mostly still too young or not developed enough in time for the event once every four years that is unique and historical, an Olympian.
Los Angeles 2028 was the mantra, four years to prepare to show the best at home. Paris 2024 was seen as a way station to the future.
The fact that for the first time in memory, no Technical Advisor was appointed by U.S. Equestrianto fulfill the vital role of team leader and coach appeared to underscore what some saw as a lack of confidence.
Not so, determined riders, trainers, grooms, owners.
Even before the unheralded arrival of Grand Prix horses Helix and Lars van de Hoenderheide for Adrienne Lyle and Bohemian for Endel Ots courtesy of Heidi Humphries and her Zen Elite Equestrian Center, and a decision by Alice Tarjan to turn over to her coach, Marcus Orlob, the reins of Jane, one of her seemingly never ending string of young horses she discovers and develops a spirit of support reminiscent of the glory years emerged.
Instead of lamenting what wasn’t, former team coach Debbie McDonald and Olympic and world silver medalist Adrienne Lyle and teammate Kasey Perry-Glass several months ago began quietly seeking to restore support within top sport.
The biggest change, welcomed by U.S. Equestrian Federation’s Hallye Griffin, former managing director of dressage and elevated to director of high performance sport, was how riders and their teams would deal with each having individual coaches as they wanted but also to be a cohesive squad.
Christine Traurig, a Sydney 2000 Olympian had been appointed chef d’equipe and embraced being the point person maintaining the critical functions coordinating schedules, providing advice when requested in a schedule of riders in several different locations at home in the U.S. and in Europe with multiple and sometimes conflicting show schedules.
Clear signs the program envisaged by Debbie McDonald and the two riders she coaches was working became apparent at TerraNova CDI3* near Sarasota, Florida two months ago where all top contenders but for two California riders competed in a final effort to be on the official squad for Europe to battle for a spot on the team for Paris.
Ashley Holzer, a four-time Olympian for Canada before switching to ride for the USA, described as an “incredible thing to see so many of us all friends and trainers of each other and all supporting each other. The atmosphere is quite amazing!
“We’ve got this one and that one warming up; this one’s coming in for this one. There’s no ill will; it’s all positive will. And that is a really nice thing. And I think from that, team America will flourish again. We will be really strong again. Because that’s always been our strength, that we can bind together and find a way forward.”
Moving to Europe presented different issues–away from the familiar and convenient; last opportunities to perform in hopes of team selection; riders, horses and grooms split into locations of their own choices and not a central training center as had been the typical arrangement for many years. And different and overlapping competitions such as some at Rotterdam’s CDIO5* Nations Cup and others at Schafhof in Kronberg, Germany the same weekend.
Steffen Peters, a veteran of five Olympics and excused with Suppenkasper from the final competitions as the Tokyo Games partnership was already selected for the Paris team based on qualifying results, made a point of going to Kronberg and volunteered this report to dressage-news.com:
“I’m writing this note with so much pride and respect for all American riders in Kronberg at the beautiful Schafhof. Every U.S. horse and rider combination knew exactly what was at stake. On top of this everybody watched each other with a sense of unity without jealousy or envy. I think it set an example on a small scale for our country, where we clearly showed that you can bring people together, which is unfortunately missing in our amazing country at home. Huge congratulations to Marcus Orlob who accepted his win with class and respect, while his entire U.S. team was cheering him on.”
Marcus, never before on a U.S. team before being selected on Jane as one of three combinations for the Paris team to be preceded by riding this week on the CDIO5* Nations Cup squad at the World Equestrian Festival in Aachen, Germany, said his experience has been “very unique and special.”
“We watch each other’s rides, we talk in the aisle, in the hotel, we see each other at breakfast,” he said. “It’s basically like a small family. I mean obviously there’s competition against each other, but it doesn’t feel like, ‘look, he made a mistake, she went off course,’ or something like this. It’s, ‘oh, darn, there was a mistake’. You can really feel this. The support was super to feel this at all. I think that’s very unique. I haven’t seen this really with many other riders. It seems to be all the riders, all the trainers support one another.”
He pointed to the head-to-head competition at Hagen, Germany where organizer Francois Kasselmann invited all the American riders, trainers and grooms to dinner.
“I think this is very important,” he said. “We should do this more as a team, to invite everybody, owners, grooms, maybe even farriers, that you can talk and help each other, support each other. I think especially for competitions, for big shows, it’s nice to have maybe even friends, not just teammates, maybe your friends so everybody feels a part of it.
“I don’t know why it’s like this but it’s a nice way of starting the show.”
The aim of voluntarily working together is not only to build team spirit and camaraderie for competitions but what Adrienne says is to keep the long term goals in mind with horses and “never for just six months, wash your hands and move on with life.”
“You want this to be a trajectory that keeps going and building,” she said. “You’ve got to weigh your short term goals with your long term goals and hopefully you can meet the middle. I think it’s super important that we keep looking, again, into that longer game and not get hung up on one, you know, that these owners that are so great and want to sponsor these high-level horses, hopefully then help us bring along a pipeline as well. So we’re not continually back in this cycle of having an up and then a kind of a dead phase.”
Debbie believes that things go in cycles “but I think everyone needs to pay a little bit of attention as to why this happens and how do we stop this from happening.
“I think we need more people able to bring along young horses with people who are willing to support them to do that,” she said. “Whether that means having a different farm or whether that means we have some central U.S. somewhere, a training or a young horse center, I think there’s a lot of creative ways you can do it.”
