“I SAID coming here that I want to get into the final and once we got here, who knows?”

Judy Reynolds achieved her ambition when she and Vancouver K made Monday’s Freestyle final.

Ireland’s best previous result in dressage at the Olympic Games was at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, when Anna Merveldt and Rapallo (11th) qualified for the dressage final, which was then the Grand Prix Special.

The individual final format changed at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996 to a Freestyle final and so Reynolds became the first ever Irish rider to qualify for this format. German-based Reynolds also became the fifth Irish rider to record a personal best dressage score at Rio, following the event team’s performance in this phase the previous week. Going into Monday’s final, she had sounded a note of cautious optimism, saying: “I don’t think we can equal Anna’s record. I’m just delighted to be there and if we can manage a top-15 [place] that would be fantastic. We all start from zero.”

The Hunxe-based rider, who was supported in Rio by husband Patrick Heavey, parents Joe and Kathleen, who own the Jazz gelding, brother Andrew and groom Libby Dudman.

“We had talked this year about doing the Freestyle but we decided not to because ‘JP’ doesn’t enjoy re-learning tests. He’s a horse that really needs to know where he’s going, he needs to be sure and I felt we needed to concentrate more on the Special this summer, because without a good Special we weren’t going to get into the Freestyle anyhow. We’ve got some great scores in the Freestyle, 79.7 is our best to date, it would be nice to get 80!”

However two errors during her test produced a score of 75.696%, four marks short of her personal best in the Freestyle and kept her pegged in 18th place.

“I’m a little bit disappointed to be honest [with the test/judges scores]. It was a pity to make two mistakes today, when we hadn’t made any all week and where mistakes weren’t expected, especially in that pirouette. That was expensive. And then in his second piaffe, he was being very helpful and thought about his piaffe too long in the end, so it was the wrong time to be helpful. So I’m disappointed to make mistakes and that has brought the score down,” reflected Reynolds afterwards.

“I haven’t seen any of the other rides but just having seen the scores, they [judges] also haven’t been all that generous.”

That was an opinion shared on social media during the week, including by the German Olympic gold medallist Nicole Uphoff.

“That’s what it feels like looking at the scores, but I’m delighted to have got that far,” continued Reynolds. “It’s been amazing. Maybe I got a bit greedy in there, maybe I went a bit too much but it’s the last day, so it was well worth giving it everything I had and I’d do the same again.”

Declaring herself “absolutely delighted” with the whole Olympic experience, The Irish Field dressage rider of the year was not surprised with her end result, saying: “I just wanted to have a go at the final and I proved I could do it. I’m very, very proud of JP [Vancouver K]. I suspected I might end up bottom of the class when you look at the people that were going.”

As for immediate plans with Vancouver K,: “There has been no plan. This is the end of the plan, so we’ll have a break and maybe a holiday,” added Reynolds, who went straight to the European Pony Championships in Denmark this week to supervise her student Emily Kate Robinson, who is competing on the Irish dressage team.