Laura Collett and London 52 have helped the British team to secure gold in the Paris Olympics eventing medals, winning Team GB’s first gold medal of the Paris Games. Laura and the 15-year-old she co-owns with Keith Scott and Karen Bartlett put in a near faultless round on the final day of the Olympic eventing competition.
For Laura and her teammates Tom McEwen (JL Dublin) and Ros Canter (Lordships Graffalo), this marks a record-breaking fifth Olympic title for the British eventing team, making them the most successful team in eventing history.
“I’m on top of the world. Riding into that stadium was an experience that I don’t think I’ll ever have again. It was spine tingling, and then I just had to focus on trying to get the job done,” explained Laura. “I’ve said it a million times, but I can’t say it enough, I owe everything to him – he’ is my horse of a lifetime and I’m so, so proud of him. I think he knew what was at stake and I wouldn’t have wanted to be sat on anything else.”
Laura and London 52, who also helped Britain bring home team gold at the Tokyo Olympics, jumped a beautiful showjumping round in the final of the team competition, but agonisingly picked up four faults when knocking the white plank from the top of the last fence. They also finished one second over the time allowed, therefore picking up .4 of a time-fault.
“He felt like he was level down to it [the last fence] and I think the crowd maybe erupted slightly too early,” she explained. “But it was one of those fences honestly, when you walked the course, you couldn’t see it – it blended in and it was a bit pot luck whether it stayed up or not. But I couldn’t fault him, he jumped amazing, and it was good enough to win a team gold. We’ll see what happens later.”
As Laura went into jump Britain had four fences in hand over the French team, who picked up team silver. However, faults incurred in the team round contribute to riders’ individual final scores and Laura will now go into that final round for the top 25 individuals this afternoon in bronze medal position, dropping behind Australia’s Chris Burton (Shadow Man) and remaining behind Germany’s Michael Jung, who maintains his overnight gold medal position with Chipmunk FRH.
Speaking of the slimmed down lead Britain had over France following the officials’ decision to uphold the 15 missed flag penalties Ros incurred during her cross-country round, Laura said it was “not what they had hoped for”.
“We managed to just think right, regroup, it’s another day, another challenge and I guess it turns out we’re all quite good under pressure, which is quite good,” she laughed. “We’ve grouped together as a team and all week we’ve just been here to do a job and at least we were still in the gold medal position. Yes, we would have wanted more in hand, but it turns out we didn’t need it.”
Laura says defending the British Olympic team eventing title is “unreal”.
“We knew coming here we had a good chance. The horsepower that the British team has at the moment is second to none. We could have fielded another whole team with the reserves and could have won a gold medal so the pressure is on [for us to perform] but luckily, we all managed to deliver.”
When asked what she would say to aspiring eventing Olympians, Laura’s answer is simple.
“I just want every child out there to realise that you can never dream too big. I definitely never really dreamt realistically that I could go to an Olympic Games, let alone go to two and come back the two team gold medals, so keep dreaming.”
Tom McEwen jumped a beautiful clear round with JL Dublin and will head into the individual final in fourth, exactly four penalties behind Michael, while Ros Canter picked up four faults in her team showjumping round but has still qualified for this afternoon’s showjumping in 23rd.
In Tokyo the British eventing team set a record finishing score to take their first Olympic gold in 49 years. Today, they move ahead of Australia and Germany, who have claimed four Olympic team gold eventing medals apiece.
Olympic eventing team medals
Gold: Great Britain – 91.3
Silver: France – 103.6
Bronze: Japan – 115.8
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