AACHEN, Germany--The U.S. team finished fourth in Team Jumping behind Germany, Belgium and Great Britain on Friday evening, Aug.21 at the World Championships.
McLain Ward on High Star Hero (Photo by Allen MacMillan)Then on Sunday, JJ Torano rode on the team that won the team gold medal CSIY, a competition for U25 riders.
The U.S. team of Laura Kraut on Baloutinue, Katie Dinan on Out of the Blue SCF, Lillie Keenan on Fasther and McLain Ward on High Star Hero had been second going into the Final, but slipped to fourth with rails from all but Ward to finish on 16.85 faults.
It was a disappointment, but considering the fact that the team initially lost the World number one Kent Farrington, who decided not to compete on Greya, then lost Marilyn Little on La Conessa and then had to substitute Baloutine for Kraut's top horse Bisquetta, it was still a great result.
It was an extremely tough course for the 10 top teams that made the Final, with four riders, or 10% of the class electing to withdraw after running into trouble on the course.
Kraut went first for the team and had one rail down, but then Dinan's Out of the Blue landed on top of the out of the three combination before the water, and instead of pulling herself together and trying to jump the water, Dinan elected to retire.
Keenan uncharacteristically had the first fence down and then another later in the course before Ward put in a beautiful clear round for the team to finish on 16.35.
Perhaps the ground at the first fence got a little slippery with the rain that fell all evening, because at least four riders had it down, which is very unusual.
THE GERMAN team of Marcus Ehning, Sophie Hnners, Daniel Deusser and Richie Vogel won the gold on 4.48 over Belgium 11.59, and Great Britain, 12.88.
Laura Kraut on Baloutinue (Photo by Allen MacMillan)"It's a hard one," said chef d'equipe Robert Ridland of missing a medal. "In championships, you can't be good two out of three days. You've got to be good all three days. We came close. Fourth out of 31 teams isn't bad, but it's not what we aim for. We were aiming for the podium. We were actually mathematically close until the last two riders from the end."
"We had quite a few high points," Ridland saud." Katie came through for us on the second day—that was great, because she didn't have a great first day. And Laura was really consistent throughout, and so was Lillie. That was a very odd mistake at the first fence 
tonight. McLain showed us tonight why he's the anchor: he's done it before, and that's why he goes last. We actually had a pretty good week, but a podium is what we came here for."
“It wasn't our night for the podium, but we still pulled together a strong performance against the world's best combinations to finish in the top four out of 31 international teams, Ridland said.”
"I'm thrilled with my my horse," said Kraut. "He was fantastic tonight. I I really have to go back and sort of watch the video and analyze what happened because I thought I came in well, but I definitely knew when I jumped in that I was underpowered for B.
"I did feel that he was a little slippy on the ground," said Kraut. "So my advice to the rest of my team was to go up a size and studs from the last two days. So I think he just didn't get a good push and maybe had the mistake, and then I knew he wouldn't touch another one because he hates it, he knows what the sport is."
"Well, my name is disappointed," said Keenan. "I had the first down, which was very uncharacteristic with my horse.Then at the end, I had that Liverpool down."
"Today was a harder day for us, to be honest," she said."Because when we went in the warm-up, there's no lights, and I was trying to keep the footing the same for my horse because I think that that's fair. I couldn't really see, so I had a refusal."
Lillie Keenan on Fasther (Photo by Allen MacMillan)"Then because we knew our score had to count for the team, I think I was maybe riding a little bit more defensive," said Keenan."To jump around and win you have to ride on the offense not on the defense. So I think that's kind of the result that we saw."
Steve Guerdat of Switzerland on Dynamix de Belheme and Deusser on Otello de Guldenboomm are tied for the lead individually on with 0.86 going into Sunday's individual Final of the top 25 riders.
Kraut on 5.06 and Ward on 6.62 are both in the Final.
Following the class, with the German win, the entire stadium erupted, and the everyone sang "Sweet Caroline:, and then danced in the rain to to various tunes for about a half hour.
On Saturday, the Young riders had their team competiton in which riders drew for which team they rode on.
Torano had a rail down, but the rest of his team, Mabkhout Owalda Alkirbi of UAE, Fares Azouniof Canada and Olivia Sponer of Great Britain were clean, so won the gold and Torano has his second gold nedal of the competiion.
The Youth Grand Prix is Sunday at 4:30 a.m. Eastern.
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