In 2021, the Olympics did not go exactly as planned for Laura Collett. Despite their team gold, Laura says she has been “pretty tormented” for three years by her Tokyo performance with London 52 (Dan), whom she co-owns with Karen Bartlett and Keith Scott. This year at Paris 2024, she laid those ghosts to rest with individual bronze to add to another team gold.
“It was never going to be quite put to bed unless I came away with an individual medal – I went to Tokyo knowing I should win one and I messed up two phases,” she says, referring to a slightly sub-par dressage test and 12 showjumping faults. “I just felt the horse has always deserved an individual medal and I’ve stopped him from getting one.”
The pair started their Paris campaign by breaking the Olympic record in the dressage with a superb 17.5.
“It had definitely been a tough week in terms of trying not to make the same mistakes as Tokyo and Dan wasn’t making it easy because he was wild and never gave me the feeling that I wanted until the actual day of the test,” says Laura.
“That was the big challenge mentally for me – I kept having to remind myself, ‘I don’t need him to feel perfect until I go down the centre line,’ whereas in Tokyo, I had him feeling sensational three days before and then he went off the boil.
“For me to have dealt with that mental side of it and then him rewarding me in that way was one of those extra-special feelings and I was quite emotional.”
Cross-country jeopardy
On cross-country day, Dan pulled off a shoe and finished with 0.8 of a time-fault.
Laura says: “He was slipping on the turns and it was a fine balance, trying to look after the horse enough that you don’t slip over and make a mistake but not letting the clock slide away too much.
“Coming through the finish, the first thing was, ‘I hope he’s OK, because he’s done quite a lot of that course without a shoe’ – I was delighted with his performance, but terrified this might be the end of the game for me if he was sore. Luckily as soon as we got the shoe back on and trotted him up, he was fine.”
It was a tough day too, for the whole British camp, with the drawn-out appeal against Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo’s 15 penalties for missing a flag.
“We were all feeling it for Ros, but we were pretty sure it was going to be OK and then it got longer and longer and you realise perhaps it’s not going to be,” remembers Laura. “We were gutted for her and ‘Walter’ and the owners because none of them deserved that outcome. Then you almost felt guilty for being on a high because Ros was on such a low.”
With the appeal unsuccessful, the team scores became much tighter.
Ros Canter, Tom McEwen and Laura Collett on their victory lap at Paris 2024
Laura Collett: “I’d always dreamed of jumping for Olympic gold”
“I spent the whole night thinking there was a high chance that I would go into the showjumping with only one or no fences in hand and thinking, ‘I hope I don’t lose it for everybody,’” admits Laura, who in the end had a “much-appreciated” four-fence buffer to secure team gold.
How did the team pick themselves up after the appeal was rejected?
“We probably had five minutes thinking, ‘This is a bit s***’ and then we were like, ‘Right, we’re not going to let the French beat us, we’ve just got to knuckle down and finish the job we came here to do’. Tom and Ros are amazing at that kind of thing.”
Laura admits the nerves were “pretty horrific”.
“I didn’t sleep at all on Sunday night,” she says. “I had a million different scenarios going through my head and not one of them was the right outcome, but I remember walking to the warm-up and saying to myself, ‘This is the position that you’ve always dreamed of being in, the last rider that jumps at an Olympic Games for the gold medal. It’s the opportunity you’ve always wanted, make the most of it because you might never have it again.’
“I had a lot of quiet time to try to get my head in the right place. Dan squealed when I went into trot and he felt like he wanted it as much as I did. As soon as I got going on him, I thought, ‘He’s my horse of a lifetime and I wouldn’t want to be sat on anything else.’”
The final planks came down, but team gold was again in the bag. And when it came to the individual round, Laura needed no second invitation, with a clear round sealing the bronze medal.
Read the full interview with Laura in 22 August edition of Horse & Hound magazine
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