Pan Am Games·ROUNDUP

Canada's show jumping team qualifies for Paris Olympics with Pan Am silver

Canada will return to Olympic team show jumping next year in Paris. Canada's riders and horses earned the team silver medal Wednesday at the Pan American Games to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games.

Canadian dressage, eventing teams also clinched Olympic spots earlier in Chile

A female equestrian competitor rides a horse through the air over an obstacle.
Canada's Amy Millar rides Truman during the show jumping team final at the Pan American Games on Wednesday in Santiago, Chile. (Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

Canada will return to Olympic team show jumping next year in Paris.

Canada's riders and horses earned the team silver medal Wednesday at the Pan American Games to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games.

Mario Deslauriers (Emerson), Tiffany Foster (Figor), Amy Millar (Truman) and Beth Underhill (Nikka vd Bisschop) finished behind victor United States and ahead of bronze medallist Brazil.

"This is a critical moment for our sport, for our program, for the people that invest in our horses and that invest in us," Millar told CBC Sports. "We get to ship forward and start planning for the next thing, which is going to be Paris."

WATCH l Canada secures Olympic spot in show jumping:

QUALIFIED: Canada's show jumping team headed to Paris 2024 with Pan Am silver

1 year ago
Duration 4:38
Canada wins silver in the team show jumping competition at the Pan American Games and qualifies for the Paris Olympics next summer.

The top three countries in the team event not already qualified for Paris earned those spots in Santiago at Grenadier Regiment Riding School.

Canada will send full equestrian teams to Paris in dressage, eventing and jumping after qualifying in all three disciplines in Santiago.

"This is something we've been working at for so long that it's just starting to settle in," Millar said. "I'm glowing on the inside."

While the Court of Arbitration for Sport determined Nicole Walker had inadvertently ingested a cocaine metabolite drinking South American tea at the 2019 Pan Am Games in Lima, Peru, the Canadian team was not reinstated for Tokyo.

Coca tea is legal and consumed in several South American countries. Coca tea is considered an altitude sickness remedy in Peru.

But Walker was nevertheless stripped of her results in Lima after testing positive for benzoylecgonine on the day of the team final.

Canada's team tumbled from fourth to seventh and out of the last qualifying berth for Tokyo.

While CAS stated Walker of Aurora, Ont., did not intentionally take a prohibited substance, the body determined she and other competitors were contractually bound by Pan Am Sports anti-doping rules, and CAS couldn't overrule them.

Foster, Millar, Eric Lamaze and Yann Candele lost a jump-off for the bronze medal at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, where Lamaze earned individual bronze.

Lamaze, Ian Millar, Jill Henselwood and Mac Cone earned Olympic team silver in 2008, when Lamaze also won individual gold.

Also on Wednesday, Canadian athletes took home nine bronze medals.

Fencers Ruien Xiao, Shaul Gordon and Fares Arfa, wrestlers Nishan Randhawa and Adam Thomson, table tennis players Eugene Wang and Mo Zhang, squash player Hollie Naughton and hammer thrower Kaila Butler all reached the podium.

Georgia Ellenwood was forced to withdraw from the women's heptathlon after injuring her right Achilles during the high jump, the same tendon she ruptured last year during a high jump attempt ahead of the indoor track and field worlds.

WATCH | Ellenwood reinjures right Achilles in women's heptathlon:

B.C.'s Georgia Ellenwood reinjures right Achilles at Pan Am Games

1 year ago
Duration 1:01
Olympian Georgia Ellenwood of Langley, B.C., falls to the ground in pain while taking part in the women's heptathlon high jump at the Pan American Games. Ellenwood ruptured her right Achilles in 2022 while competing in the same discipline.

With files from CBC Sports' John Grant

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