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W&L Alumna Training for Top Equestrian Competitions

Lynn Symansky is spending her summer training under the auspices of the United States Equestrian Federation. The 2005 Washington and Lee graduate and her horse, Donner, are world-class competitors in their equestrian sport: three-day eventing.

Lynn, who rides and trains other horse-and-rider teams at Handlen Farm, in Middleburg, Va., received a Land Rover Training Grant. The USEF website says she and her fellow grantees, both horse and rider, are “combinations that currently possess the ability to be competitive anywhere in the world.”

From the United States Equestrian Team Foundation, she also received a Jacqueline B. Mars Competition and Training Grant for European competition this fall. She and Donner will gallop through the Les Estoiles De Pau CCI****. (The four stars indicate the difficulty of the competition, with four stars being the highest.)

You can think of the sport as an equestrian triathlon, with the teams performing dressage, cross-country jumping, and show jumping. It is one of the only Olympic sports where women and men compete together.

We last blogged about Lynn and Donner two years ago, when they competed in the XVI Pan American Games, in Guadalajara, Mexico, on the U.S. team that took the gold medal. Donner is 10 years old, a Thoroughbred and a former racehorse. Lynn writes that he “loves stale horse cookies, napping, having his ears rubbed, and snorting.”

You can follow the careers of Lynn and Donner at the website for Lynn Symansky Equestrian and on Facebook.