Jessica Springsteen, 29, daughter of American singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, is set to make her debut at Tokyo Olympics after she was included in the US Equestrian team for the event. She was one of the alternate riders for London 2012.
US Equestrian on Monday announced the team which included riders - 40-year-old Kent Farrington (riding Gazelle, a 15-year-old Belgian Warmblood mare), 55-year-old Laura Kraut (riding Baloutinue, an 11-year-old Hanoverian gelding) and 45-year-old McLain Ward (riding Contagious, a 12-year-old Deutsches Sportpferd gelding) - along with Springsteen. She will be riding Don Juan van de Donkhoeve, a 12-year-old Belgian Warmblood stallion.
The team will be led by Chef d’Equipe Robert Ridland and Team Leader Lizzy Chesson and has Brian Moggre and Lucy Deslauriers as reserves.
According to olympics.com , Springsteen, whose father has produced musical hits such as Born to Run , Dancing in the Dark and Thunder Road , first learned to ride as a four-year-old on the family's farm in New Jersey. She is one of the most impressive American riders and has won the 2014 American Gold Cup and the 2017 Falcon Stakes CSI 5* at the Royal Windsor Horse Show.
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Springsteen told CNN in 2017 that it was her mother who encouraged her to take horse riding. "She started taking lessons and then I also wanted to start. I never wanted to miss a lesson and I ended up being right across the street from a really top junior training barn called Beacon Hill," she recalled.
Springsteen will be hoping to continue the good work done by her more experience team members USA has won Team Jumping medals at six of the previous nine editions of the Summer Games.
The Tokyo 2020 Team Jumping qualifying and final take place on August 6 and 7.
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