TORONTO - Mac Cone of King City, Ont., rode his horse Ole to victory while his Olympic teammates Ian Millar and Jill Henselwood took second and third Saturday at the $100,000 Canadian show jumping championship.
The three riders were part of Canada’s silver-medal winning team equestrian unit at the Beijing Olympics. Cone was unable to complete the entire Olympics due to an injury to his horse, but Ole seemed totally recovered Saturday night.
"It’s nice to have Ole back and to be able to show people what a nice horse he is. It really means a lot." said Cone. "He jumped beautifully, and although he appeared to have something in his throat which made a noise during the second round tonight, he kept jumping just beautifully."
All riders completed an initial round of 15 jumps with the top ten returning for another round over a new, shortened course.
Millar, from Perth, Ont., had a couple of lucky rubs, but held on to finish second aboard Redefin. His daughter Amy finished fourth.
Defending Champion, Keean White was not so lucky, having the first and last rails down in the initial round tonight to drop to fifth overall.
Henselwood, from Oxford Mills, Ont., said she’s still tweaking a relationship with new mount Bottom Line .
"Tonight I slowed it down, because it’s a new partnership, and I may have swung the pendulum a little conservatively and we had a time fault in the first round this evening," Henselwood said. "But I felt she needed to jump the contest successfully as a confidence builder and I think we got that done."
