Elton Tucker, Assistant Editor - Sport

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil:

The third and final day of individual equestrian event turned out to be a huge disappointment for Jamaica's Samantha Albert at the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro yesterday.

Coming into the show-jumping section in sixth position, Albert, Jamaica's first competitor in equestrian at the Games, dropped to 16th overall after her horse, Before I do It, refused at the sixth obstacle. She did continue after repairs to the fence by the attendants but the damage had already been done.

To her dismay, Albert accumu-lated 20 jumping penalty points and 11 time penalties to drop a whopping total of 31 penalty points. Americans swept the medals. Karen O'Connor won with a low 52.70 penalty points, followed by Phillip Dutton on 53.80 and Gina Miles on 56.30. The top riders in evening are those with the least penalty points, after the dressage, cross-country and show jumping.

Albert's worst fears were realised after cool temperatures on the first day gave way to above-30 degrees centigrade weather on Saturday and yesterday. Yesterday's temperature topped 35 degrees C at the venue and it was too much for the 12-year-old mare which was bred in Sweden.

"She was very tired yesterday (Saturday) as the heat got to her and she was struggling. Today she is not herself at all. She has never had two fences down let alone stop in show-jumping.

THE HEAT

"I could not get her going forward from the beginning and then you get a little bit protective of them. But I knew as soon as she jumped the second fence she just did not want to go in the air. She was trying to sort of dive over the fence. She was obviously suffering more than I thought she was. I knew the heat affected her a lot yesterday (Saturday) because it took about 90 minutes to cool her down," Albert said.

Despite the setback she remains optimistic that she will get the necessary points from upcoming equestrian events to qualify for next year's Olympics in China.

"This horse does not cope with the heat and I know that now and she will never go to Beijing. So I will have to get the other horse at home ready," she added.

Albert, who visits Jamaica regularly to teach show-jumping, expects to be in the island later this year.