America’s own Marilyn Payne announced on her Facebook page yesterday that she has been chosen as President of the Ground Jury for eventing at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, and the full list of equestrian officials is now available.
The remainder members of the Ground Jury who will be working alongside Marilyn are Sandy Phillips of Great Britain and Andrew Bennie of New Zealand. Alec Lochore (GBR) will serve as the Technical Delegate with Geoff Sinclair (AUS) as the Assistant Technical Delegate. The eventing Chief Steward will be Jürgen Petershagen of Germany, and Christian Landolt of Switzerland is the eventing member of the Appeal Committee.
As we’ve known for some time, Pierre Michelet (FRA) is the cross country course designer, but an eventing show jumping course designer is not listed.
We are delighted for Marilyn who has previously presided as PGJ at the 2010 World Equestrian Games and judged at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She’s an FEI 4* Eventing Judge, “R” Eventing Technical Delegate and USEF “S” dressage judge and is a familiar face at major events in the U.S.
With the Pan American Games fast approaching and announcements such as this one, it’s starting to feel like the Olympics are right around the corner! There is obviously a lot of pressure for the U.S. to qualify with a gold medal at the Pan Ams, and we’d be lying if we didn’t say we were already speculating about an American dream team to put us back on the Olympic podium.
Go Olympics! Go Eventing!
