Cildren’s and Pre-Junior competitors took to the podium for the first time during team competition on Thursday at the Gotham North FEI North American Youth Championships for Jumping, presented by USHJA. Canada took the top spot on the first podium of the day, claiming gold in the Children’s Team Competition for teammates Taylor Wood, Livia Martin, Tristan Tobin, and Mathilde Candele. In the Pre-Junior category, Zone 7 claimed the top honors with Campbell Brown (Fayetteville, Ark.), Ava Le (Flower Mound, Texas), Avery Griffin (Austin, Texas), and Kaylee Rayner (Houston, Texas) accepting their gold medals. Junior and Young Riders competed in their respective First Qualifier classes later in the day, where it was Della White (USA Zone 10 – Newport Beach, Calif.) and Tanner Korotkin (USA Zone 4 – Wellington, Fla.) who claimed top honors, respectively.
First in the ring for Team Competition Thursday morning, the Children’s category welcomed each athlete from all five teams competing over a track designed by Brazil’s Anderson Lima. Four teams tied on a fault-free score coming into the day, which narrowed to just two tied teams on a zero score after all combinations had jumped once. The USA’s Zone 2 sat in a tie with Canada after round one, which held through as the teams jumped yet again, leading to a tie at the top for the gold medal.
As competitors took to the gold medal jump-off, the Canadian team brought their A-game, piloting to three clear-round efforts and securing the gold medal. Zone 2 took the silver medal, with a small but mighty team of three athletes, Tarin Kiely (Rumson, N.J.), Emma Brody (New York, N.Y.), and Rylynn Conway (Fair Haven, N.J.).
“I got him at the beginning of January,” Candele said of her mount, Disco de Pleville, who she rode to the quickest jump-off time of any competitor. “We’ve been trying to figure each other out. We started in the low juniors at WEF and from there we’ve just tried to get sturdy on him because he’s my first horse. He was so good. We’ve been working on our jump-offs recently, so he was turning amazing, and he was going forward right away.”
At the conclusion of round two, Zone 10 and Zone 4 both sat on four faults, forcing another jump-off between the two teams to determine who would take the bronze and who would just narrowly miss the podium. Ultimately, Zone 10 produced the faster jump-off and secured the bronze for team members Shylee Elimelech (Calabasas, Calif.), Chloe Kuang (Las Vegas, Nev.), Scarlett Wallis (Watsonville, Calif.), and Lilah Nakatani (Temecula, Calif.).
“It’s been an amazing experience at this horse show,” commented silver medalist Kiely. “It’s my first time here and everyone is just so nice and I’m really thankful for all of the sponsors that make this possible for us.”
“It’s been amazing,” Brody said of her silver medal-winning team experience. “I really enjoyed it. Even though we’re a smaller team, we all know each other now and we’ve enjoyed getting to know each other.”
Children’s competitors now gear up for Saturday’s Children’s Individual Final, where athletes will contend for individual spots atop the podium.
