Team USA Is on the Road (and, Later Today, in the Air) to Rio

By on Jul 29, 2016 9:00 am -

After a few days of training camp at Meredyth South in Ocala, the Team USA event horses are loaded up and on the road to Miami, where they’ll board their flight to Rio tonight.

A few troopers from the USEF crew are already in Rio, preparing the horses’ and their riders/grooms’ digs. USEF Director of Sport Programs Will Connell has been blogging daily from the belly of the beast, chronicling the myriad details that go into setting up a temporary home base for elite athletes of both the human and equine variety. You can check out his updates here.

The team itself looks to be fighting fit and ready.

And they’re off! Starting the last leg of our toad to Rio. See you do there Glen and Sally!

A video posted by Clark Montgomery (@clarkmonty) on

Meanwhile the riders are flying from Orlando to Houston today for USOC team processing — we want photos of you guys in your USA uniforms, don’t disappoint us! — and will then fly to Rio tonight.

The European and Europe-based teams are in travel mode as well, with the first eventing charter of 35 horses scheduled to leave London’s Stansted airport today. Others depart over the weekend from from Liege in Belgium. We’ve quite enjoyed this departure play-by-play from BBC broadcaster Jonathan Agnew at Stansted:

EN’s own intrepid reporter Jenni flies down Wednesday. We’re already in full-on Olympic mode here at Eventing Nation, so keep it locked here for much, much more!

Go Eventing.