DeRosa Daily Equestrian Olympic News
Horsesdaily Veteran Olympic Reporter Diana DeRosa Brings Us Into Her World

Reflections of a Medal Lost

Tonight I thought I’d be raving about the Team Bronze Medal we’d achieved in Dressage.  I was even hopeful we would get a Silver.  Instead we placed fourth, a shock to all of us but most of all to Debbie, whose score was too low to help the team achieve a medal.

Instead it was Germany (again) who won the Gold: Heike Kemmer (Bonaparte), Nadine Capellmann (Elvis VA) and Isabel Werth(Satchmo).  The Dutch team won Silver and the Danish won Bronze by less than a point over the US.

As I watched in awe what was happening before me, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  The normally rock solid Brentina started out with a ride that had no mistakes but lacked something.  What it was that was missing I wasn’t quite sure of and later in chatting with some of the officials there were others who felt the same way.  Something was wrong.  Brentina didn’t quite seem right tonight and it all became clearer when Debbie asked Brentina to do a pirouette and what she got didn’t even resemble one. 

Then the extended trot across the diagonal appeared more like and extended passage. The series of mistakes that happened at the end of the ride were just too many to overcome.

Later when speaking to the journalists it was clear that Debbie was devastated and probably if they all weren’t there she might have found a corner to shed some tears.  She explained that something was wrong.  To her Brentina just didn’t like something in the arena and did not want to be there.  She did all she could to hold it together but once she lost the pirouette she knew there was no chance of salvaging the ride.

The horse that had brought her so many accolades had let her down just this once and Debbie couldn’t even explain why.  But as Debbie has often said many times before, Brentina owes her nothing.

Bad Things Shouldn’t Happen to Nice People