Canadian Show Jumping Team athletes, Erynn Ballard of Tottenham, ON, Lisa Carlsen of Okotoks, AB, Mario Deslauriers of Bromont, QC and Nicole Walker of Aurora, ON are through the horse inspection and set to take centre stage at the Lima 2019 Pan American Games in Peru.
Canada presented five horses at the first official horse inspection, including travelling reserve, Count Me In, ridden by Beth Underhill of Schomberg, ON. All five were cleared by the FEI veterinarians.
A total of 56 entries from 16 countries are expected to move forward into the jumping competition, which gets underway on Aug. 6 with a single speed round counting as both a team and individual qualifier. Two rounds will follow on Aug. 7, representing the team final, as well as the second individual qualifier. The individual medals will be determined with two additional rounds on Aug. 9. In addition to team medals, the top three teams not already qualified will earn their place at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Filling the anchor position will be Deslauriers, 54, who kicked off his international career in a big way at the age of 19, becoming the youngest rider in history to win the 1984 World Cup Final – a record he still holds today. Deslauriers has since attended three editions of the FEI World Equestrian Games (WEG), as well as the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, with Lima 2019 completing his trifecta of major games participation. Interestingly, his daughter Lucy Deslauriers, 20, will be making her Pan Am debut in Lima, riding for the United States Show Jumping Team.
Deslauriers’ partner in Lima will be Amsterdam 27 (Catoki x Acord II), a nine-year-old Holsteiner gelding owned by Wishing Well Farm LLC and Luga LLC. First taking over the ride in 2018, Deslauriers has brought Amsterdam 27 along up to the top level of the sport. This season they have picked up FEI wins at the Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) in Wellington, FL as well as Old Salem Farm in New York. Most recently, they had two second place finishes at the CSI 5* level at the prestigious Spruce Meadows Summer Series in Calgary, AB.
Carlsen, 54, was one of Deslauriers’ teammates at the Seoul 1988 Olympic Games. She is making a return to the Pan Am Games for the first time in 32 years, having brought home team gold from Indianapolis in 1987. In Lima she will be competing with Parette (Passoa VDL x Barinello), her 13-year-old Brandenburg mare that she has been developing since the age of six with great success.
Partnered with Parette, Carlsen returned to the Canadian Show Jumping Team in a big way in September 2018 when she rode in the CSIO 5* BMO Nations Cup at the Spruce Meadows ‘Masters’ Tournament for the first time in 31 years, contributing to a second place finish. Later that month she headed to North Carolina as the travelling reserve for WEG 2018. In 2019, Carlsen and Parette have seen even more nations cup success, including third place in Coapexpan, MEX in May, and a big win on home soil at the CSIO 5* Langley in British Columbia in June.
Ballard, 38, has also seen a surge in her international career over the past few years – although she is no stranger to success, becoming the second of just four Canadians total to win the prestigious ASPCA Maclay National Championship in 1998, and taking individual gold at the 1999 FEI North American Young Riders Championships. Ballard made her Canadian Show Jumping Team debut at the 2006 BMO Nations Cup at Spruce Meadows, where she helped Canada win for the first time in the event’s storied history.
Since partnering with renowned horse agent, Ilan Ferder, Ballard has made an impressive return to the world stage, winning the $100,000 CSI 5* Longines Speed Challenge at the 2018 Longines Masters of New York, and being named to her first major games team for WEG 2018. In her Pan Am debut, Ballard will be paired with Ferder’s nine-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding, Fellini S (Vermont x Rash R). Since the spring of 2018, the duo have been steadily climbing up leaderboards, including a CSI 5* win at WEF 2019 and top-five placings at Spruce Meadows and the CSI 4* Upperville in Virginia just prior to Lima.
Rounding out the team is Walker, 26, whose family roots are in thoroughbred racing, but her heart has always been in jumping. After a stellar junior and equitation career that included the CET Medal Final title, she headed into the Under 25 series and took the national title in 2017 at the Royal Horse Show in Toronto, ON. One year later in that same venue, she became the 2018 Canadian Show Jumping National Champion with her Lima partner, Falco van Spieveld (Toulon x Lys De Darmen), a 14-year-old Belgian Warmblood gelding.
In 2019, Walker made her team debut aboard Falco van Spieveld at the CSIO 4* WEF, and has since become a regular on Canada’s nations cup team, contributing to the win in Langley and also the third place in Coapexpan.
Underhill, 56, a veteran of Olympic, World Championship and Pan American Games, was named travelling reserve for the team with Sandy Lupton’s 12-year-old Hanoverian gelding, Count Me In (Count Grannus x Sherlock Holmes), in light of their strong 2019 season that has included back-to-back wins at both the CSI 2* Caledon and CSI 2* Ottawa in Ontario.
“All of our horses jogged beautifully,” said Canadian Show Jumping Team Chef d’Équipe, Mark Laskin. “We are anxious to get going. We were in training camp in Florida for about six days before traveling here, and we’ve been here for a few days now, so everyone is primed and ready to go.”
