Miss Independent Is Back On Top At Olympia

The game gray mare has bounced back from injury and is better than ever with Laura Kraut.

Early in 2008, Laura Kraut chose to let Miss Independent sit out the selection trials for the U.S. Olympic Games team.

It was a tough decision, since “Missy” had been Kraut’s ride for team silver at the 2006 World Equestrian Games (Germany) and was jumping well. But Kraut knew that Missy was still on the road back from an injury that had kept her out of competition for most of 2007. She chose to let the mare return to form on her own schedule. And while Missy wasn’t in the spotlight at the Games, where Kraut rode the young Cedric on the gold-medal U.S. team, she did quite a bit of winning on her own this year.

Kraut and Missy finished their year with a thrilling and hard-fought victory in the Olympia Grand Prix on Dec. 22, the finale of the Olympia London International Horse Show (England).

Kraut thought Missy, 13, would be primed and ready for a big win at Olympia since the game mare had won the Credit Suisse Grand Prix at Geneva (Switzerland) the week before and the Rolex Classic Grand Prix at Brussels (Belgium) the last week of November. 

“In Geneva, I don’t think I’ve ever gone so fast in a jump-off in my life. I was steeplechasing the jumps there,” said Kraut.

But the World Cup-qualifying class at Olympia didn’t go their way. “I made a tactical error,” Kraut said. “Because the time allowed was so tight, I turned back really short on a vertical. 

“I think she thought she was in a jump-off, and when she left the ground, she turned and took the whole wing of the jump down.  After that, I was trying to be the fastest four-faulter because there were only two clear, but she had another one down later in the course. 

“That was Sunday night at Olympia, and so for the grand prix on Monday, I didn’t have that great a feeling. I
thought she might be tired, since she’d jumped four shows in five weeks. But she was unbelievable—she didn’t touch a jump.