Erynn BallardOlympian

About Erynn Ballard

Erynn Ballard is a Canadian showjumper, born in Oakville, Ontario on 13 September 1980 and based at Looking Back Farm in Tottenham, Ontario, with her international competition work running through Ilan Ferder Stables in Wellington, Florida. In the FEI snapshot reviewed on 6 August 2026 she was 26th in the Longines Rankings on 2,304 points and third in the Pan-American Rankings on 1,917 points, with 2,215 starts and 95 wins on the FEI counters that cover results from 1 January 2010 only and are not lifetime totals.

She is an Olympian on the strength of competitive starts, not selection: at Paris 2024 she rode Nikka vd Bisschop in the team qualifier, where one rail left Canada 14th on 32 and out of the team final, and in the individual qualifier, where four faults in 76.60 seconds placed her 37th. Her senior record also includes two FEI World Championship starts, at Tryon in 2018 with Darkos Promise (team tenth, individual 61st) and at Herning in 2022 with Gakhir (team tenth, individual 44th); the Lima 2019 Pan American Games with Fellini S (team seventh, individual 12th); and one FEI Jumping World Cup Final, 17th at Omaha in 2023 using Hero for the opening competition and Gakhir thereafter. She was listed among Canadian riders qualified from the North American League for the 2026 Fort Worth Final but does not appear on the official FEI participant list, so no 2026 Final start is counted. She holds no senior championship medal, and four youth continental medals from the North American Young Rider Championships.

Canada won the BMO Nations Cup at the Spruce Meadows 'Masters' with Ballard in 2006, riding Robin van Roosendael on her Nations Cup debut and taking the country's first win in the event, and again in 2021, when she produced the only double clear on Jack van't Kattenheye. She was also on the winning Wellington Nations Cup team of 2007 with two clear rounds, and Canada was third in the 2026 Wellington Nations Cup with Her Game Ball BG. Those Spruce Meadows wins are Nations Cups at a Major venue, not Major Grand Prix wins: under the four-event definition covering only 's-Hertogenbosch, Aachen, the Spruce Meadows 'Masters' and Geneva, she has no Rolex Grand Slam Major victory, and her results at the Spruce Meadows 'National' and 'Continental' are not Majors either. Her first CSI5* Grand Prix win came in 2024 at the Major League Show Jumping Grand Prix of Vancouver with Nikka vd Bisschop.

Her junior record includes the 1998 ASPCA Maclay National Championship, which made her the second Canadian to take the title, and the Christie Conrad Perpetual Trophy in the same year; she was Equine Canada Equestrian of the Year in 2006 and took the Winter Equestrian Festival Overall Leading Lady Rider Award in 2026. A 2013 fall left her with a broken collarbone, shoulder-joint and scapular injuries and nerve damage to the left arm, and she returned to riding within a year. Her 2026 season has run across several horses rather than one combination: CSI4* and CSI3* Grand Prix wins with Chatadel PS, a CSI5* class win with De Flor 111 Z Santa Rosa, her leading ranked combination, and a CSI5*-W speed win with Her Game Ball BG. She said in early 2026 that she had ridden 66 different horses at least once in competition over the previous year.

Two conflicts are recorded rather than resolved: the FEI profile displayed age 46 on 6 August 2026 where date-of-birth arithmetic gives 45, and the Team Canada athlete profile displays 32nd for her Paris 2024 individual qualifier where FEI, Equestrian Canada and Olympedia record 37th. Earlier records held on this page and not covered by the current source review are retained, including a CSI5* Palm Beach Masters win in 2019 and Spruce Meadows 1.55m and 1.50m class wins with Kimificant in 2022.