It appeared at first that doing two courses in the hot humid weather would be the situation that the horses would have to deal with but suddenly after 12 riders had gone in the second round the skies opened up. So much rain was dumped in the arena that they had to stop the class in order to deal with the flooding.

Eventually the puddles all but disappeared and the footing was surprisingly good but some of the horses were affected by the muddier conditions. Windy City was one of those horses. He ended up losing a shoe as he was about to jump the third fence on the course, after they’d already downed the very first fence. In the end the rest of the U.S. riders managed to do what they needed to do to maintain their first place position. Engle also had eight faults, Madden had one rail down for four faults and Kappler put in his second clear round. Their total of 13.66 could not be overtaken. Mexico was second (21.87), Brazil third (43.39), Argentina fourth (56.57), Chile fifth (68.16), Canada sixth (70.15), Colombia seventh (89.79), Guatemala eighth (92.06) and Ecuador was eliminated.

The biggest disappointment was for the Brazilian team who had claimed the bronze medal in the past two Olympic Games. In Santo Domingo they did not have their strongest rider, Rodrigo Pessoa, because the owner of the horse he rides would not allow him to take the horse to Santo Domingo because quarantine restrictions lasted for two months. In the end that decision was probably what lost them their position for the Olympics. However, they are hopeful that some individual riders will qualify.