The Plains, Va.—July 9   

All eyes were on Clark Montgomery as he and Loughan Glen cantered down centerline this afternoon at the Land Rover Great Meadow International CICO***.

As one of a handful of U.S. pairs that are capable of scoring in the 30s in dressage, expectations were high for Montogmery and “Glen.” Add to it that it’s their first event back on U.S. soil in several years and that they’re anchoring the U.S. Nations Cup team, and Montgomery admitted there was a lot of pressure.

But they kept their cool to score a 36.3 and take hold of the lead, well ahead of U.S. Olympic team traveling alternate Maya Black and Doesn’t Play Fair (41.4), who put in a fluid, expressive test to sit second.

But things are just getting started here at Great Meadow, with show jumping to come tonight.

“I feel good,” said Montgomery. “I feel a little bit nervous because the expectation to perform in front of the home crowd that hasn’t seen me in a long time. That’s kind of a funny feeling. I didn’t expect that. But at the same time it’s good because everybody’s going to expect me to perform well in Rio, so it’s good to go ahead and deal with a little bit of those nerves here on a much smaller scale.”

Glen had a couple of bobbles in his test, including trying to halt early on the first centerline, but the rest of the test was solid, with expressive changes and big extended trots.

“We started off with a mistake which was pretty annoying. He’s kind of been doing that to me this year, and it’s the one move I forgot to practice getting ready in the warm up because we kept it quite short because of the heat for him, but for Rio, he will not be trying to halt before L!” Montgomery said with a laugh. “I just relaxed before X and he went to stop. Everything else felt quite good actually except the second change, which again I made the same mistake. I turned across the short diagonal, and he felt good, and I relaxed, and he lost his balance. It’s such a short diagonal that there’s not much time to fix it before the change. He changed clean but it certainly wasn’t as good as he could do.”

Montgomery has the heat and humidity on his mind, as he’s been based in England since 2012 but Glen seems to be coping with it.

“He seems quite good,” he said. “He was really bright and even strong in the arena sometimes, and that was nice to feel. The heat hasn’t taken it all out of him. We’ll know more with how he jumps, but he certainly felt good today.”

Show jumping will start tonight at 5 p.m., so stayed tuned to coth.com for more news and photos.

Full results can be found here.