Changes are afoot on the Canada’s Paris Olympics dressage team.
With the pre-Games training camp coming to an end, Jill Irving’s Delacroix has been declared not fit to compete. No further details have yet been provided.
Irving and Delacroix will now be replaced by travelling alternates Chris Von Martels and Eclips.
Von Martels and Eclips previously represented Canada at the Tokyo 2021 Games, finishing 39th overall. In Paris they will ride alongside Camille Carier Bergeron and Finnländerin and Naïma Moreira Laliberté on Statesman.
Paris would have been the Olympic debut for Irving. But there is still a chance she may compete.
Irving was the seventh alternate for the Canadian team on her second mount Genesis. With the fifth combination declining travel to the pre-Games staging and logistical challenges prohibiting the sixth ranked combination from traveling to the staging camp in France from North America in time for competition, Irving and Genesis are now the traveling alternates and will join the team in Paris.
A change was also annoucned on Canadian dressage team leadership.
Chef d’equipe and team manager Christine Peters has stepped aside due to unspecified personal reasons. She will now be replaced by Olympian Brittany Fraser-Beaulieu.
No statements have been issued by the Canadian team members on social at the time of publication.