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Lottie Fry keeps her cool to maintain Britain’s Olympic silver medal position

Martha Terry Martha Terry

    • Lottie Fry boosted British hopes of a Tokyo Olympic dressage team medal with a sympathetic test on a lively Everdale in the grand prix special at the Olympic Games.

    Lottie scored 76.854% to finish fifth within a bunch of riders all scoring around 77% in group two.

    “Everdale has tried his heart out out there, and given me everything,” said Lottie.

    The horse made an expensive mistake breaking into canter early on in the test with the marks dropping from eights to fours, but Lottie kept her cool to rebuild from a low of 73% back up to plus-76%. They created a powerful, dramatic picture overall, but after the early error, Lottie kept a lid on the stallion’s delightful extravagance until the second half of the test when she dared to ask for bit more.

    “It was a shame we had one mistake near the beginning but I really picked him up after that,” she said. “I thought, ‘we can’t afford to lose any more’, and he kind of listened to that and really gave everything from that point. I was so happy – a lot of things felt better than yesterday.”

    Lottie finished strongly, scoring a nine for a canter pirouette – and sat tight as Everdale showed a bit of a spark after the final halt.

    “He was pretty hot tonight, so we had to keep a lid on it, but we managed to keep it until the end, when he got a bit of a shock when the audience clapped,” Lottie added.

    Britain were already breathing down Germany’s neck thanks to a superb performance from Britain’s first rider Carl Hester and En Vogue. Carl scored 78.344%, second in group one behind Dorothee Schneider on 80.6%.

    This means Britain are not letting Germany run away with the gold medal, and are just holding the US and Denmark at bay in the silver medal slot.

    Lottie, 25, is making her Olympic debut and had already enjoyed a fantastic start on the Lord Leatherdale x Negro stallion. She topped her group on Saturday with 77.096% to qualify for tomorrow’s (Wednesday, 28 July) grand prix freestyle, the individual medal decider.

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    Martha Terry
    Martha Terry

    H&H features editor
    Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.
    Martha Terry

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