September 28, 2025 
At the 2012 Olympic Games, U.S. gymnast McKayla Maroney became an inadvertent meme for the unimpressed face she made upon receiving a silver medal in vault. On Sunday at MLSJ Greenwich, Daniel Bluman made a strong case for his own.
The Israeli rider’s pained face as he exited the ring, head thrown back in disappointment, left little doubt about how he was feeling.
The look, known as Silver Medal Syndrome, is the facial equivalent of “what could have been”—the face of an athlete fixating on the gold medal, or in this case blue ribbon, they narrowly missed.
And Bluman had every reason to feel is acutely in that moment.
Last to return for the eight horse jump off in the CSI5* Grand Pix of Greenwich, he and his speedy grey Corbie V.V. were stride for stride on the time to beat set by Kent Farrington and Toulanya. As he raced through the timers, all poles still in place, Bluman cast a hopeful glance at the clock— and slumped his shoulders in defeat.
Three hundredths of a second too slow.
Three hundredths of a second that cost Bluman $17k in prize money.
If he was ruminating on what could have been, Bluman doesn’t have to think too far back to imagine it. Just one MLSJ leg prior in Toronto, Bluman and the 10-year-old Cornet Obolensky mare bested Farrington and Toulanya and again it was fractions of a second that separated them.
“We got a little revenge today,” smiled Farrington in the press conference. “That’s how the sport goes. It’s very small margins at the high level.”
Bluman was quick to dismiss it as a burgeoning rivalry though.
“When you’re talking about the world number one, eight five-star Grand Prixs [in a single season], [Kent] really is in a league of his own,” he said. “That being said, I’m really trying to chase and do the best that we can do.“
Farrington has now won eight five-star 1.60m GPs this year—three of those consecutively over the past three weeks. He’s heading into the fall season as strongly as he started the year. Between January and February, he won three 1.60m GPs in four weeks, including the Longines World Cup of Thermal with Toulanya.
Key to his success strategy is picking the venues best suited to his mounts.
“Toulanya, compared to my other horses, is a very fast, smaller type of horse, better suited to a smaller arena setting like today. She can also go in a larger arena, but I would say her strength or advantage among the other horses is probably best suited to an arena like this.”
MLSJ next heads to Hudson Valley, NY October 9–12.
