Olympic Slots Reshuffled after Wave of Withdrawals, Riders Declining to Go to Tokyo

A whole group of Olympic starting places has freed up as a wave of withdrawal started yesterday. Several dressage riders have declined to be nominated for their country's Olympic slot, which freed up space for new riders.

New Zealand --> Malaysia

The snow ball effect started when New Zealand announced that their rider, Melissa Galloway, will not seek a starting place in Tokyo. The NZL slot was opened up by Wendi Williamson and Don Amour in 2019. In 2020 Galloway achieved her MERs while besting Williamson's scores.

"Unfortunately Covid was the problem, I was not able to get oversees with enough time to compete, as well as the Equine (Herpes) Virus and Brexit it just became too much of a risk to move to the UK not knowing if there was going to be competitions or not," Galloway told Eurodressage. "We made the decision to stay put in NZ and focus on hopefully getting a NZ team to WEG 2022! We had no qualifying competitions in NZ or Australia for the Olympics."

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