Second on course for Canada in the jumping portion, Jessica Phoenix and A Little Romance also had a run-in with the final combination, lowering the oxer. Nevertheless, she was delighted with their round. “Go Blue Eyes!” she exclaimed happily afterwards. “She was amazing!”
Phoenix had to go to the crop a couple of times with the little mare (“she’s around 15 hands”) who looked very small indeed in the vast arena. “She doesn’t have the biggest step and as per usual she would add strides everywhere,” Phoenix explained. “The only place she does the prescribed amount of strides is through triple lines, which is a relief! She is like a pony, but she’s all heart and she jumped amazing today, I was so proud of her.”
Overall, she was quite pleased with their performance. “Yesterday’s cross-country course was definitely the most difficult course I have ever done at the Olympics, and you can see by running down the results there were a lot of fantastic horses that didn’t have the greatest day. To be here and to finish with a show jumping round like that on A Little Romance is a great feeling.”
In previous days Phoenix had been the trailblazer, but today she had the luxury of watching others go to see how the course was riding. “I was getting used to it [going first] and then my teammate Rebecca Howard said, ‘you know, it was nice of you to let someone else go first today,’” she said, laughing.
And what’s up next for this pair? Phoenix said, “She’ll have a little rest and then we’ll probably head out to Rolex next spring.”
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