REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, NAYPITAW -- The dressage competition at the Southeast Asian Games in Myanmar has been completed, with gold going to Malaysia’s Praveen Nair Mathavan riding Sein Win Mal.
Mathavan finished with 67.405 percent, with Indonesian riders taking out the remaining medal positions. Valentino Lumentah on Ngwe Lar May won silver with 67.162 and Ferry Wahyu Hadiyanto scored 65.135 to win bronze on Perfecting Ruby.
Indonesia won team gold, with Myanmar second and Singapore winning bronze.
The dressage competition was honored with the presence of the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi attended the second day of the competition to watch her own horse, Myanma A-Hla, or “the beauty of Myanmar” perform.
Cambodian rider Puthminea Sor rode the stallion in the team dressage competition on Friday.
Princess Sirivannavari Nariratana, granddaughter of the king of Thailand, finished 1oth in the individual competition.
All riders except for the home nation at the 27th SEA Games rode on borrowed horses, because of quarantine restrictions.
The move has drawn criticism from other national federations throughout the games, with Fuangvich Aniruth-Deva, secretary general of the Thailand Equestrian Federation, telling the Bangkok Post newspaper: “The other Asean nations will get to use the horses for three days, and the horses that the hosts have arranged are below the standard.”
But later an official from the Thai federation told newspaper The Irrawaddy: “We were arguing because we could not bring our own horses, but now we like the horses from Myanmar and have found nothing to complain about.”
Equestrian events of the SEA Games also included endurance, which was run early in the event, and jumping, which is now under way.
About 80 horses are involved in the games, coming from Burma and other countries, including 30 from Australia for the jumping and dressage. The endurance horses were all local.
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