Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Following Thursday’s horse inspection at the National Equestrian Centre located 30 kilometres north of downtown Rio de Janeiro, Canadian Eventing Team Technical Advisor David O’Connor announced the team members and individuals that will compete for Canada in the eventing competition taking place July 20 to 22.

The four team members will be Kyle Carter on Madison Park, Sandra Donnelly on Buenos Aires, Waylon Roberts on Paleface and Michael Winter on Kingpin. They will vie for team medals against three other nations: Argentina, Chile and the defending gold medalists, the United States. Jessica Phoenix riding Exploring with compete for Canada as an individual, and all four team members are also eligible for individual medals. In addition to the four countries fielding teams, the host country of Brazil has two individual entries while single entries from Jamaica and Uruguay bring the total number of competitors to 24.

Two of the Canadian Eventing Team horses were bred in Canada. Sandra Donnelly’s 10-year-old Canadian Warmblood gelding Buenos Aires, a horse she bred herself, and the 12-year-old Canadian thoroughbred gelding Paleface, ridden by Waylon Roberts. At 18 years old, Roberts is the youngest member of the Canadian Equestrian Team in Rio de Janeiro, and the youngest competitor in the Eventing competition at the Pan American Games. Roberts is also the only Team member to have competed previously in Brazil, when he was Canada’s representative at the 2002 FEI Children’s Final in Show Jumping.

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