Canada's show jumping team qualifies for Paris Olympics with Pan Am silver

Canada will return to Olympic team showing jumping next year in Paris.

Canada's riders and horses earned the team silver medal Wednesday at the Pan American Games to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games.

Mario Deslauriers (Emerson), Tiffany Foster (Figor), Amy Millar (Truman) and Beth Underhill (Nikka vd Bisschop) finished behind victor United States and ahead of bronze medallist Brazil.

"This is a critical moment for our sport, for our program, for the people that invest in our horses and that invest in us," Millar told CBC Sports. "We get to ship forward and start planning for the next thing, which is going to be Paris."

WATCH l Canada secures Olympic spot in show jumping:

The top three countries in the team event not already qualified for Paris earned those spots in Santiago at Grenadier Regiment Riding School.

Canada will send full equestrian teams to Paris in dressage, eventing and jumping after qualifying in all three disciplines in Santiago.

"This is something we've been working at for so long that it's just starting to settle in," Millar said. "I'm glowing on the inside."

While the Court of Arbitration for Sport determined Nicole Walker had inadvertently ingested a cocaine metabolite drinking South American tea at the 2019 Pan Am Games in Lima, Peru, the Canadian team was not reinstated for Tokyo.

Coca tea is legal and consumed in several South American countries. Coca tea is considered an altitude sickness remedy in Peru.

But Walker was nevertheless stripped of her results in Lima after testing positive for benzoylecgonine on the day of the team final.

Canada's team tumbled from fourth to seventh and out of the last qualifying berth for Tokyo.

Foster, Millar, Eric Lamaze and Yann Candele lost a jump-off for