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It’s always more fun to root for the home team, and at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics Games equestrian fans will have a bunch of opportunities to cheer on several horses and a rider connected to Woodside.
At 33, Woodside native Karl Cook is the youngest member to join this year’s jumpers for Team USA. He’s an alternate, riding alongside three seasoned veterans of the Games.
Based in Rancho Santa Fe, Southern California, Cook has been competing in Europe since May, and is now training in France to get ready for the showjumping events to be held at Chateau de Versailles in less than two weeks.
His mother, Signe Ostby of Woodside, has owned his horse for a year and a half, and says, “As of last week Caracole [de la Roque] was the number one placed horse in the U.S., and number two in the first six months in the world.”
The 12-year-old bay mare is a Selle Français, which Ostby describes “is basically a French saddle horse.”
Caracole was bred in France and previously ridden by a well-known French rider who will be competing on the French Olympic team. Ostby said the Olympics will feel a bit like homecoming for the horse, because she already has a local fan base who applauds when she enters arenas.
Ostby explained that competitors will be scored for two things: how cleanly they clear the jumps, and for speed. The height of the jumps could be as tall as five-foot-nine inches.
She goes on to point out that the rules have changed from the days when four rode on a team and you could drop a score. Now three ride on a team and there are no dropped scores, “so you have to put your best three out there.”
The night before each event the chef d’équipe for the team will decide who will ride and in what order for “the best chance to win a medal.”
Laura Kraut returns to jumping for Team USA after winning silver in the Tokyo Olympics four years ago. This time around she’ll be riding Baloutinue, a 14-year-old bay Hanoverian gelding owned by former Woodside resident Barb Roux.
Like Ostby, Roux has competed at the amateur level and breeds horses at her barn, St. Bride’s Farm in Upperville, Virginia.
Dressage rider Akiko Yamazaki of Woodside and Four Winds Farm owns high performance dressage horses, including Suppenkasper, a bay gelding Dutch Warmblood born in 2008. That’s the same year Yamazaki started sponsoring Steffen Peters in international dressage competitions on her horses. He won a silver for the US Dressage Team at the Tokyo Olympics and this summer hopes to come home a winner on Suppenkasper.
Another Woodside rider and horse owner, Karie Thomson, and her husband David, a New Zealander, are also thrilled to be traveling to France to watch their horse compete. Their Dutch-bred 12-year-old bay mare Hiarado will be eventing for Team New Zealand.
These Games will be Jonelle Price’s fourth and she is excited to be riding Hiarado, whom she calls “gutsy, determined, feisty and strong-willed.”
Olympics.com has the schedule for all of the events, with eventing starting on July 27, dressage on July 31, and jumping on Aug. 1.
