Saturday April 5, 2003

2003 Pan American Games Contenders: Yvonne Losos de Muniz

Jumping And Dressage Do Mix!

Because Yvonne is also an active jumper competitor, she will finish her Florida tour and head for Kentucky to compete – in jumping and dressage. Her horses from both disciplines accompany her everywhere. “I can’t stay and do the jumping and send the dressage horses home because I have to keep training, so my jumpers come with me to dressage shows and my dressage horses go to the jumping shows.” Yvonne travels with 18 horses, but personally rides only six. “The jumping is a lot harder to get results because you’re going by faults and it’s a lot tougher. I’m not as high in the jumping as I am in the dressage.”

After her hat trick at the Zada/WEF CDI, Yvonne does have a preference for disciplines. “Right now, dressage!” she laughed. “I love both in their own way, I really do, but obviously, my strong point, my definite discipline, is the dressage. I do the jumping to entertain myself.”

As precious as one might think the mare is, Yvonne said that if she hadn’t gotten the 12-year-old Inatana Las Marismas as an older mare (she bought her as an 11-year-old) she would have jumped her. “I jump all my dressage horses. It’s fun for them. I’ve had horses that are phenomenal dressage horses but a little nuts in the head and you jump them for a year and it kind of lets all the steam out,” explained Yvonne. “I think they should all do it. I don’t believe in over-pampering. My mare, I do pamper now, because she is ‘pamperable’ – she’s that type of horse.”