Fresh from winning a bronze medal in the Pas De Deux this morning with her sister Hannah, Joanne stole the show with a faultless final freestyle with a monumental score of 9.119 which gave her an unbeatable overall championship mark of 8.718. “It’s been an incredible week,” Joanne said, “to come back here after the last WEG with the same team and horse is amazing and to win another gold makes it even more special.” Joanne is lunged by her father and her horse, W H Bentley has now been to four World Equestrian Games. “We came here with high hopes but you have to do four good rounds to win a medal,” said lunger John, “so we just took it one round at a time and I have been so proud of each performance and we have got the result we wanted, I am delighted with what we have achieved.”
Joanne’s motto of the games was just to put on a performance and enjoy herself at these games as she loves the sport so much, “today we just wanted to show what we have been doing in training at home for the last for years and put on a show and we have had a great time doing it,” she said.
After a slow start to the competition back on Tuesday, Italy’s Anna Cavallaro has been climbing back up the ranks to take eventual second place for a silver medal. She performed a beautiful final freestyle to Andreas Bocelli’s Sogno (meaning Dream) to gain a mark of 8.697, giving her a final total of 8.452. “I am really happy with my result, it was my dream to go home with a medal,” Anna said, “the compulsory test was not good for me but the rest of the competition was great as is the result.” Anna’s lunger Nelson Vidoni has trained her for 11 years and is immensely proud of her, “I cannot measure the depth of my happiness,” he said.
The bronze medal went to Switzerland’s Simone Jäiser who has performed consistently all week and was awarded a score of 8.863 in her final freestyle, meaning her final four day mark was just a fraction behind Anna’s, at 8.433. “It feels great to have a medal, it was my goal to have achieved this at the end and I am pleased for my team as well as myself,” she said.
