BY KAREN BOSSICK

After months of preparation, Adrienne Lyle’s quest to ride to a second consecutive Olympic team medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris ended before she even had a chance to ride.

USA’s Olympic equestrian team was scratched after officials spotted blood on the right hind leg of a 10-year-old mare ridden by Marcus Orlob. Up until that point the horse and rider had a 74 percent score, which could’ve gone up higher with the remainder of the ride.

Orlob was the first of three Americans to ride in the two-day qualifying competition that decides the 10 teams that will compete for medals in the Grand Prix Special on Saturday.

Lyle, who is riding a new horse named Helix, and Steffen Peters who is riding the silver medal winning Suppenkasper from the Tokyo Olympics, can still qualify as individuals for the Grand Prix Freestyle. Lyle posted a 72.593 percent in her individual ride on Helix, whom she just began riding this winter.

If her score qualifies her for the FEI Grand Prix Freestyle, she will compete on Sunday, Aug.4.

The U.S. Equestrian Federation said they believed Orlob’s horse named Jane accidentally stepped on herself going in the arena. The tiny nick resulted in the elimination of the entire squad from the Grand Prix team event at Versailles Palace.

Hailey’s Debbie McDonald, an Olympic medal winner who has coached Lyle for years, had warned of the new rules restricting the number of riders on a team to three. Before, there were four riders per team, which meant that if something happened to one rider or one horse, the remaining three could still compete as a team.