This is Parzival. He’s a very nice horse. I would give him a carrot. However, if you went to the dressage area at the Rio Olympics this afternoon to give him a carrot, you might not find him there, since he had to leave the dressage competition after a suspected bug bite left him with a “toxic fever.”
Parzival won silver in individual dressage and bronze in team dressage in London (or more accurately, won them for his human overlords), and his rider Adelinde Cornelissen will now have to drop out since the Dutch didn’t bring a spare horse. Our friends at Horse And Hound have more from Rio:
“Yesterday I came to the stables and his cheek was completely swollen and it appeared he was bitten by a spider or a mosquito or something,” said Adelinde. “His body was full of toxic fever [with a fever of] over 40.
After spending the day on liquids, his temperature dropped, and it appears he will be okay. Cornelissen was going to try and ride him in the Grand Prix segment of the team competition, but he just wasn’t feeling it:
“I discussed it with the team vet and we decided we’d give it [the grand prix] a try for the team result,” she added. “But he felt totally empty and I didn’t want to put him through that. He didn’t deserve that, did he?”
I hope Parzival feels better.