With just 24 hours to go to the London 2012 Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony, excitement and great expectations are building up in the Olympic venues dotted around the city whilst record ticket sales – over 2.2 million tickets sold – are already hailing this edition as the greatest ever. This will be the fifth time Para-Equestrian Dressage is on the programme but it is the first time it is held in a country with such a strong Para-Equestrian culture, so strong that since it became a Paralympic sport in 1996, Great Britain has held the team title on every occasion as well as leading the individual medal count by a whopping margin.

Paralympic Dressage Primer Part Three: Get to know your North American Competitors by Ellie Brimmer August 24, 2012 –Now that we are all settled in London and the horses are moving into the Greenwich Park venue today, I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at the North American competitors, so you know a little more about the local riders you may cheer for. Representing North America include a four rider team from both The United States and Canada, a three rider team from Mexico and an individual rider from the US Virgin Islands. Let’s take a look first at the United States: This years top ranked rider is Rebecca Hart, she is the 2012 USEF Para-Equestrian Dressage National Champion and our only Paralympic veteran on our London squad.

Prepared by: Lindsay Yosay McCall On August 29, 2012 the United States Para-Equestrian Dressage Team will complete their final FEI horse inspection and the opening ceremonies for the 2012 London Paralympics will commence.  The United States has selected their best equestrians including: veteran Paralympian Rebecca Hart, 27, and Lord Ludger, owned by Jessica Ransehousen; Jonathan Wentz, 21, of Richardson, Texas and Kai Handt’s NTEC Richter Scale; Donna Ponessa and Western Rose, owned by Wesley Dunham; and Dale Dedrick and her own Bonifatius.

Charlotte Dujardin on Valegro – Great Britain By Kim MacMillan – Photo Captions by Allen MacMillan Dressage freestyle day was today, with the top 18 horse and rider duos coming back to perform to their custom-designed rides to music. It is always fun to see their creativity expressed. I expected to see a few scores above 80% and maybe one above 90% and that is pretty much how it played out.  Laura Bechtolsheimer on Mistrral Hojris – Great Britain The British Crowd gave Laura a rousing review                 Riders from Austria (1) , Denmark (2), Germany (3), Great Britain (3), Italy (1), the Netherlands (3), Portugal (1), Spain (1), Sweden (2) and the U.S.A

  Steve Guerdat and Nino Des Buissonnets from Switzerland By Kim MacMillan – Photo Captions by Allen MacMillan I silently hoped for good rounds out of our two remaining U.S. riders today, McLain Ward riding Antares and Rich Fellers riding Flexible.

Steffen Peters & Ravel (Shannon Brinkman) Greenwich, UK – The equestrian competition at the 2012 Olympic Games ended today and the U.S. medal drought continued. Steffen Peters and Ravel carried the weight of a nation into main arena for the Freestyle, which would determine the Individual medals, and the most consistently clutch combination in U.S

FEI Secretary General Ingmar De Vos has spoken publicly for the first time about the Canadian team Jumping horse Victor, which was disqualified under the FEI’s hypersensitivity protocol shortly before the Olympic team competition in London on 5 August. “Disqualification of an athlete will always spark speculation, but in the case of Tiffany Foster’s horse Victor the protocol established very clearly that this was an obvious case of hypersensitivity”, Ingmar De Vos said today. “This was a unanimous decision, supported by four highly qualified veterinarians who specialise in testing for hypersensitivity using a system that has been monitoring FEI competitions since 2005.” “These have been really great Games, and all the equestrian disciplines at Greenwich have been very special

August 7, 2012 By Kim MacMillan – Photo Captions by Allen MacMillan All Photos by Kim & Allen MacMillan/MacMillan Photography/Copyright 2012 Today was another BIG day for British fans. Their dressage team was not to be denied gold, despite the best efforts of the German (silver) and Dutch (bronze) teams