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Right: 18-year-old Reed Kessler and Cylana in London. Right, below: Reed and Cylana during the veterinary inspection.


Lessons Learned It’s an old adage: “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how


you play the game.” Simply taking part in the Olympics would be the highlight of many athletes’ careers, but naturally the ultimate payoff for all that hard work is to finish in the medals. Bearing that goal in mind, these three riders have their work cut out for them as they set their sights on the next Olympics. While they blew away the competition at the Barbury


Castle, Tiana and “Finn” completed the Olympics on an individual score of 88.6. They scored a 52 in dressage, had a stop on cross-country and then had two rails down and three faults in show jumping, not quite the result that she had hoped for with the whole world watching. Individually, she ranked 40th out of 74 starters, while the team placed seventh. Reflecting on the competition, Tiana says, “It is so easy


to get wrapped up in your own world and beat yourself up for mistakes. It’s so crushing when you’ve dreamed for years of going to the Olympics, and then you get there and have your worst result across all three days. But if you can step out of that for a moment and look around, you see that for one person to have a good day, someone else has to have a bad day.” Walking around the Olympic Village after her event


was over helped to put things in perspective for Tiana. “No matter what, the best in the world have a bad moment that can ruin their entire Olympics. It put a lot in perspective. I really got the feeling in the Village that a lot of athletes live on a four-year plan and are always moving forward to the next Olympics.” Already looking forward to the 2014 World Equestrian


Games in Normandy and the 2016 Olympics, Tiana says, “In the future I’m going to make it a point, with potential team horses of mine, to try to take them to an event with enormous atmosphere in the stadium. To me that would be Aachen in Germany—I’ve never been there, but it sounds like there’s no place with more atmosphere! Finn had gone in the big stadium at Rolex Kentucky and he coped with it really well, but it’s not the same as the atmosphere at the Olympics. It’s clear to me that there are things like that which you can do to be better prepared.” Tiana notes that the pressures of being on a team are subtle but real, and she felt that those pressures affected her preparation for the Games. “You look to the left and right and wonder if you should be doing what other people are doing,” she says. “Being in training camp means you’re automatically doing things differently than you would at home and that you prepare differently than you would in the lead up to a normal event.” In show jumping, the U.S. finished tied for sixth. This was the first time since the Sydney 2000 Olympics that the U.S.


18 November/December 2012


didn’t finish first in team jumping. Hosts Great Britain took gold, with the Netherlands claiming silver and Saudi Arabia bronze. Reed Kessler individually was tied for 47th out of 75.


Like Tiana,


Reed has mixed feelings about her own performance and results. “In the grand scheme of things, to make it to the Games at my age is an unimaginable accomplishment,” she says. “However, I didn’t go just to say I made it—I went to medal! Still, it was an amazing experience and I learned so much from it.” She says that one of the biggest differences for the


Olympics, compared to other shows, was all the jumping that they had to do at the numerous selection trials beforehand. “In the U.S.,” she says, “we have so many trials it was like we had already jumped the Olympics a few times this year before we even arrived!” As she develops a game plan for herself and her horses,


Reed also plans to get as much championship experience as possible in the next few years. Her immediate goal is to compete in the World Cup in 2013. While Adrienne and Wizard enjoyed their most successful


show season yet in 2012 leading up to Olympics, (which included winning the Grand Prix Special at the World Dressage Masters, and winning the G.P. and G.P. Freestyle at the CDI 5* in West Palm Beach), she also says that she plans to get more experience at major competitions with a lot of atmosphere before 2016. She and Wizard placed 35th out of 50 in the Grand Prix. Ultimately the U.S. team placed sixth. “Going into our Grand Prix test at the Olympics, Wizard had been schooling really well and I was so pleased with


Kim MacMillan/MacMillan Photography


Kim MacMillan/MacMillan Photography


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