Irish Dressage Team qualify for the Olympics

convert · 20-08-2019 5:16pm #1

Just heard that the Irish dressage team has qualified for the Tokyo Olympics. Absolutely fantastic news and a great achievement from Anna Merveldt, Heike Holstein, Judy Reynolds and Kate Dwyer. And an historic team qualification!

Ireland have qualified a dressage team for the Olympic Games for the first time ever.

There were three places at the Tokyo Games up for grabs At the European Championships in Rotterdam to countries which had not yet qualified, among them Austria and France.

The clinching performance for Ireland came from Judy Reynolds, who set a new Irish record score to lift her country into one of the qualification spots.

Reynolds has competed in the OIympics as an individual, and produced a star turn along with team members Heike Holstein, Anna Merveldt - both also previous individual Olympians - and Kate Dwyer.

They finished on a final score of 213.540 to finish second of the eight teams who had been chasing one of the three tickets to Japan.

Ireland were just outside the Olympic qualifying places when Reynolds entered the arena as last to go with her horse Vancouver K.

Under huge pressure, the Kildare woman delivered a stunning performance.

The Ireland showjumping team begin their quest to qualify for the Games for the first time since 2004 when their European Championships competition starts on Friday.

https://www.rte.ie/sport/equestrian/2019/0820/1069880-ireland-dressage-team-books-historic-ticket-to-tokyo/