Suzie Dunkley's Olympics are over after her weekend performance in the team dressage failed to qualify her for the individual finals due to start tomorrow.

Olympic rules for this most complicated of equestrian disciplines state that only the top half of the field in the team event go on to contest the individual medals.

And final results posted yesterday showed that 40-year-old Dunkley, competing in her second successive Olympics, could do no better than 42nd in the 50-rider field, compiling a score of 60.08 percent.

A disappointed Dunkley said yesterday she had hoped to score much higher and believed she would have done had it not been for a sudden weather change which delayed her ride for more than an hour and a half.

"When the weather screws up the schedule, it screws up the warm-up for the horse and there's not much you can do,'' she complained. "My horse was all ready to go when we were informed of a thunderstorm warning. First we were kept waiting 10 minutes, then 20 minutes, then 40 minutes. Eventually I didn't go in until an hour and a half later and by that time the horse was tired.

"He did well considering the amount of waiting we had, but it just wasn't good enough.'' In Barcelona four years ago, Dunkley placed 29th on her mount Highness, who died of a heart attack at the age of 18 in May this year.

She then qualified for Atlanta on Elliot, an 11-year-old chestnut Hanoverian gelding bought in Florida two years ago.

But the horse's lack of experience in an event which requires horse and rider to move as one in a series of difficult manouvres was exposed in a field which, naturally, contained the top dressage competitors in the world.

"It was unfortunate that we rode in Saturday's group because I've been informed that on Sunday the scoring was much higher,'' added Dunkley. "If I had ridden yesterday I would have had a much higher score and perhaps made it through to Wednesday.

"But I didn't come here with real high ambitions. I came with the hope of doing a good test and getting a good score. Elliot is getting better and better, but he's still very green. "We've had to retrain him for Grand Prix.

He's had to learn all these hard tricks in a year, so our expectations weren't that high.'' Dunkley, in Atlanta with her husband Rob Zandvoort and chef d'equipe Dennis Cherry, rode in the first group of the team dressage on Saturday, her final score slightly lower than the 62 percent she attained at the CDI Asti in Turin, Italy where she qualified for these Games.

Dressage is considered by many as the least interesting of the equestrian events -- even by many of riders -- but is probably also the least understood.

Guiding the horse through a series of 38 mandatory moves, the rider's goal is to execute each manoeuvre flawlessly while making it appear that no commands are being used. Five key manoeuvres -- piaffe, passage, pirouette, half pass and flying change -- need to be carried out in a certain order with perfect rhythm at specific places in the ring.

Each rider and horse begin with 100 percentage points and five judges positioned around the show ring deduct points according to style and the number of mistakes made.

A score of 80 percent or more is considered phenomenal and 70 percent extraordinarily good.

At the Georgia International Horse Park, it was Germany's Isabell Werth on Gigolo who led the 25 qualifiers with a score of 76.6 percent.

Had Dunkley placed in the top half she would have advanced to tomorrow's Grand Prix Special test after which the leading 12 go through to Saturday's Individual Freestyle. Individual medals are decided on the average score over the three rounds.

Dunkley, who has been staying outside the Games Village in private accommodation, will now head to Virginia where she will coach for a week before heading back to her home in Holland.

After that she intends to take Elliot on the World Cup circuit and to the World Championships and eventually to the Olympics again in Sydney in 2000.

Bermuda at the Olympics YESTERDAY Sailing STAR CLASS -- Peter Bromby/Lee White, race ten, sixth; overall (final), 13th.

LASER CLASS -- Malcolm Smith, race nine, 43rd; race ten, 34th; overall, 42nd.

EUROPE DINGHY -- Paula Lewin, race nine, fifth; race ten, 17th; overall, 13th.

TODAY Athletics: Rest day Sailing: Rest day TOMORROW Cycling Elliot Hubbard in road race, 8.30 a.m.

Athletics Troy Douglas, 200m first heat, 11 a.m. second heats in evening Sailing Paul Lewin, final race of Europe Class, 2 p.m.

Malcom Smith, final race of Laser Class, 2 p.m.