Laura Collett Breaks the Olympic Dressage Record Amid Full Paris Leaderboard Shift - Eventing Nation - Three-Day Eventing News, Results, Videos, and Commentary (2024)

Perhaps this was always going to be the way of things, with 64 tests crammed into one day – but when the morning dressage leader at the Olympics is someone like Great Britain’s Tom McEwen and JL Dublin, and they’re sitting on a score of 25.8, you start to convince yourself that perhaps onlya few competitors will be able to best them in the afternoon.

But there was something in the water over that lunch break, evidently, even though Paris is operating an almost entirely dry venue here. (Well, we say dry – it’s certainly alcohol-free, though after a full day battling the elements, we’re not sure anyone can really use the worddrywith a straight face.) In the early afternoon, we saw the ground jury of Christina Klingspor, Xavier le Sauce, and Robert Stevenson enter a period of next-level joie de vivre, and suddenly, records were being smashed, leaderboards were being overturned in rapid succession, and enough excellent scores were being thrown around that we’ve ended the day with a sterling 22 competitors coming in under the 30 barrier – and a top ten that features absolutely none of our morning riders.

Tom’s not far off the pace, though, and a gold medal still feels well within his grasp: he and ‘Dubs’ now sit eleventh on that 25.8, and have contributed to the best post-dressage team score ever recorded at a Games. The Brits go into tomorrow’s cross-country on an aggregate score of 66.7, smashing the previous record of 68.6, held by the Australians since the 2008 Beijing Games.

But the rider who had the biggest part to play in that overnight success for her nation also finds herself so close to individual gold that she can taste it.Laura CollettandLondon 52are certainly no stranger to extraordinarily competitive first-phase marks – nor, even, to scores that dip below the 20 barrier. And today, in her 389th career international test, the Tokyo team gold medallist and her three-time five-star winning partner truly put the pedal to the metal to deliver Laura’s best-ever score – a 17.5 that also sets a new Olympic record by nearly two points.

“I loved every second of it,” beams Laura, whose incredible finish was met with a sea of Union Jack flags from the strong British support front in the stands. “That horse is unbelievable. What he’s done throughout my whole career is amazing, and he just keeps on delivering. So I’m just very grateful to him. I had the time of my life, to be honest. From the moment I entered the arena, he had his ears pricked and loved it, and so did I.”

On this, the beginning of their second Olympic adventure, Laura’s taking everything she’s learned over the years with ‘Dan’ to try to coax his very best out of him –going back to Tokyo in 2021, where they were individually ninth after an uncharacteristic couple of rails, and further, too, to his early years at the top levels peppered with genuine, though achingly high-profile, teething moments.

But time, and patience, and learning from both the great days and the tough ones, has been the making of the now very nearly infallible partnership.

“It takes years and years of hard work [to develop a relationship], and he’s a horse that’s actually very shy,” she explains. “It’s taken him quite a long time to understand cross-country, mainly because he’s a very shy horse. In 2019, we had a roller coaster year, and at the end of the year, he won a four-star long and went into a prize giving, and that, for me, was the turning point. He really believed in himself; he had full trust in me, and I can feel it on top of him.”

In today’s consistent downpour, Laura had to rely on that trust in the fishbowl of the main arena, where the stands were full of people utilising any method possible to try to stay dry.

“He doesn’t like umbrellas and things like that, so it’s about reassuring him every step of the way and making him believe, because then you can go and do a performance like he did there,” she says. “You never really think you’re going to do it, but everything’s been gearing towards this. It’s been three years in the making, since the moment we stood on the podium in Tokyo. We thought there, he’s still young enough to aim for Paris, and I’ve been very lucky that everything’s gone to plan in the lead up. He’s just a horse that luckily gets better and better with age.”

Laura’s continued remarkable reign of domination in the sport isn’t just impressive because of ‘Dan’s’ wobbly 2019 season; it’s also a testament to the force of her will, which saw her battle back from a nearly catastrophic injury eleven years ago that left her in a coma and took the vision, irreversibly, from one of her eyes. Her motivation then was much the same as it is now: to keep moving towards the next goal, the next step, the next dream, whether that dream is learning how to see a stride again or hunting out an individual gold medal.

“I look back it only to see how lucky I am and just to be here, let alone be literally here. It’s in the past and we try not to dwell on the past, but I know full well that I was very lucky to walk away from that and be able to carry on doing the job that I love. It’s my life, and I love these horses and love working with them day in and day out, and being able to come perform on a stage like this with a horse like London 52… I’m very, very lucky,” she says. “To be honest, I don’t think about [my impaired eyesight]. There’s no other option than to carry on. It’s amazing how quickly my body adapted, and depth perception was very difficult to begin with, but the only thing I wanted to get to do was get back on and ride horses. You have to find a way, and for me it’s normal now to only have one [working] eye. I might be better if I had two, but we’ll never know!”

You’d be forgiven for thinking that a 17.5 would lend a commanding lead and perhaps a fair chunk of time in hand in tomorrow’s cross-country phase, but no such luck: sitting second overnight is Herr Gold Medal himself, Germany’s Michael Jung, who delivered a 17.8 to slot in just three-tenths of a penalty behind Laura and helms the German team into second place, too.

This is a personal best at four- and five-star for the sixteen-year-old gelding (Contendro I x Havanna, by Heraldik), but, remarkably, not an all-time international personal best – that came earlier this year in a CCI3*-S at Radolfzell, where the pair put a 17.3 on the board. We’ve heard of aiming to make your bank account balance match your phone number, but inching towards making your dressage score match your horse’s height is a whole new set of niche goals, frankly.

“It was an amazing feeling to gallop into the stadium — it was a goosebump feeling, but at the same time a really great feeling, because Chipmunk was so well concentrated and so good with me, so well listening,” says Michi. “It was so nice to ride every second — and directly before I started the dressage, I knew I could take all the risks and I could try everything.”

Like Laura and Dan, Michi and Chip are tackling their second Olympics together –they finished eighth at Tokyo after a contentious safety device activation. Now, five years into their partnership after Michi took the ride over from teammate Julia Krajewski, he’s ready to throw all his own considerable experience (Michi’s won three Olympic golds already, in case you’d forgotten that reign of domination) at the job at hand –and the years of learning he’s done to unpack the inner workings of his horse, too.

“At every competition, everything I did was experience and learning, trying to get a better partnership with him together and get information, and everything was training for this competition,” says Michi. “I think everybody had the same idea because the Olympic Games are such a special competition and everyone is really, really well prepared.”

China’s Alex Hua Tian and Jilsonne van Bareelhof didn’t match their four-star personal best today, but for a first crack at a five-star test, they certainly acquitted themselves admirably. They sit in equal bronze medal position going into cross-country on a score of 22, the same score as Australia’s returning eventer Chris Burton and Shadow Man.

“He’s good in this space, but you never know going into arena like that — especially with a horse like ‘Chocs’,” says Alex, who tells EN that his horse’s stable name was chosen because he’s ‘big, brown, indulgent chocolate.’ “He’s very extravagant, and he knows it, and he’s very arrogant; he loves the attention. I think for him, he was always going to trot in there and think, ‘Oh, I finally found a venue of similar majesty to myself!’ That was either going to go this way, which thankfully it did, or it was going to go the other way, and he was going to get over the top about it. He’s done a 21 at four-star, so he can do a really good test – it’s mainly whether he walks, basically!”

Now-four-time-Olympian Alex has primarily targeted Chocs at CCI4*-S format, with his last long-format run coming in March of 2023 at Montelibretti’s CCI4*-L –and that, he explains, is largely a management decision.

“He’s jumped around a lot of four-shorts, but he’s a horse that I always liken to a human athlete that’s at Olympic level — weightlifting, marathon running, and gymnastics — one body cannot have that much talent and that much range,” says Alex. “Chocs is the most talented horse I’ve ever sat on in my life. There are other very talented horses that have been more consistent, or more successful than him over years, but if you look at him in each phase, he just goes extra — and I think because of that, through his career he’s picked up little bits and pieces on his way to big events, and so he’s quite often not made it. Last year, he was our first choice for the Asian Games, and picked up a little injury in the month beforehand, and that would be his story.”

But if the gelding isn’t historically easy to manage, he does, at least, have the great benefit of having been built up, trained, and strengthened in order to hit his peak this weekend.

“For me, this has always been his goal and his target. We’ve saved him for seven years to come here, and tomorrow we unleash the beast and see what happens!”

Unleashing the beast is no doubt exactly what Burto, historically dubbed ‘the fastest event rider in the world’, has in mind with his new partner, the former Ben Hobday ride Shadow Man. The fourteen-year-old Belgian Warmblood (Fidjy of Colors x Favorite van de Keezerswinning, by Winningmood) joined his string just before the mid-winter Olympic transfer deadline, and marked Burto’s return to eventing after swapping to pure showjumping for several seasons –and getting himself shortlisted for the Australian showjumping team here, to boot.

Today’s 22 was the horse’s career-best international score –and the key to it, it appears, was riding the wave of the colossal buzz in the ring after the previous rider, Michael Jung, laid down a game-changing score.

“Shadow Man was on his toes,” laughs Burto. “He’s a very relaxed horse, and he got really excited because some guy went before me that the crowd liked to cheer for, but then I was just delighted with him — he went back to work, showing what a lovely gentleman he is and showing how well-schooled he is. That was a real treat for me, and it’s always a buzz to be at the Olympics. He’s a pretty cool guy — if they are a good nature, they’re a good nature.”

Taking on the gelding, who Ben rode up to five-star, was a no-brainer for his return to the sport, he says.

“I said to my vet when we went up to Ben’s to ride him and vet him — in the same day! — I said, ‘I feel like I know him already,’” he explains. “We were made for each other the day we were both born. This horse came over the tables, like: ‘Would this be a suitable one for that client that someone was speaking about the other day, for a Championships?’ I said, ‘No,’ and walked straight in and saw my wife, and said, ‘How do you feel about going eventing again?’ She said ‘No, absolutely not. No way.’ I rang our High Performance Manager, Chris Webb, and thanks to the support of Geoffrey Guy at Chedington Equestrian, I was able to secure the ride on Shadow Man for the season, and it’s been a delight. I’ve loved it – I really enjoy eventing him.”

The strength of the partnership has been a massive boon in his return to eventing, but ultimately, says Burto, “riding doesn’t change, does it? Riding horses is riding horses. I was away from [eventing] for a while, and I was delighted when I got back to it. Your skill set doesn’t leave you. I got very nervous at Aachen actually, because I thought, ‘What if I ruin my career and what if I’m old and I can’t go fast anymore?’ But that was nice to see that it doesn’t leave you. I am old, though.”

This is a truly international top ten –which is particularly nice to see in the flag-collecting atmosphere of an Olympics – and at this point in the competition, we’ve got nine different nations within the top ten. One of those is Switzerland, whose ongoing upward trajectory is led by five-star winner Felix Vogg, who rides the relatively inexperienced Dao de l’Ocean this week. Today, the eleven-year-old gelding (Kannan x Heddy, by Heraldik) posted a best-ever international result –yes, another one – to sit fifth overnight.

“He gives me so much confidence, because I know when I do it right, he’s doing it right, and I give him some confidence, I think,” says Felix, who has had the Olympics in sight for this horse, rather than his more experienced team horses Colero or Cartania, since last season.

So far, that call is paying off.

“It was pretty awesome. I think I could have done some stuff a little bit better, but it’s always like this,” says Felix. “I think what we had outside, I got 90% inside, and that’s all I could ask him. I know he’s not as far as other horses here, maybe like Chipmunk or London, a horse like that — he still needs the strength and everything — but I’m happy to think about the future now.”

After those huge tests from Laura and Michi, there was plenty of buzz throughout the stands about what British team anchor – and reigning European Champion –Ros Canter might throw down with Lordships Graffalo. The pair posted a 21.3 at last year’s European Championships en route to the win, and there was plenty of speculation that they could dip into the teens for the first time today – but no such luck.

Their test, though, was smart, polished, and cadence, with just one slightly laboured flying change and a late halt dropping their marks down slightly. They ended up on a final score of 23.4, good enough to clinch overnight sixth place.

“Mark-wise, I had no expectations,” says Ros. “I kept in my own little bubble, really, apart from watching my guys and a couple this morning. I’ve very much tried to stay process-driven today.”

With a competitive start in the bag, she says, “I’m over the moon with him. We all forget that ‘Walter’s’ actually only twelve years old; that, yes, he’s won Badminton and the Europeans and everything else, but he is still a green horse. I still very much feel like we’re only scratching the surface, particularly in a test like that, which is significantly harder than the tests we normally see. I’m absolutely delighted that he got all four changes and everything, because he’s still not fully matured yet, and I do think there’s much more to come from him. We halted a bit late and it had a bit of an effect, unfortunately, on the two movements. But these things happen with horses, and the rest of it, he was spot on.”

The imposing grandstands towering overhead –and the vocal British cheering sections scattered around them –worked in favour of the British-bred gelding (Birkhof’s Grafenstolz x Cornish Queen, by Rock King).

“He absolutely loves attention. So, yes, he lifted, but only ever so slightly; he just seems to kind of revel in it, and he’s so self-confident and so self-assured that I think he thought he was well up for being there,” laughs Ros. “He was quite happy. I think when I finished him patted him, he had a little scratch, and then looked up and thought, ‘Yeah, I’m all right.’”

While she may have been able to avoid the pressure of trying to mark-match today, Ros has certainly felt the effects of expectation in the longer term as she’s approached an Olympics at which she’s a hot favourite to win.

“Oh yes, I’ve had plenty of wobbles — but actually, the closer it’s got, the better I felt,” she says. “Everybody knows me so well; we’re so grateful to the National Lottery for all the funding we get and the staff that we have around us — Ian Woodhead, Chris Bartle, Richard Waygood — they know me inside out, they know what the wobbles mean. Ian was delighted that I snapped at him yesterday, apparently, because apparently that means that I’m getting towards being on my A game. So I’ve had a few wobbles, but once I got on today, I felt very clear minded.”

Over the last few seasons, Ros has taken more and more of the pressure off her top horses at home, and Walter, like Pau winner Izilot DHI, spends more time hacking than he does schooling. But nailing a test like today’s does still take mileage in the ring running through the movements, and Ros has a secret weapon in her pocket where that’s concerned.

“I’m very lucky I’ve got my old five-star horse Zenshera at home — he’s 20 years old now, so he’s always in work, but often only light work. The last month, he’s been working hard as well, helping me to practice the test and make sure I know it inside out. He’s absolutely amazing, and to be quite honest, I think he would have stood in for Walter if we needed him this week, he thought he was about ready to go!”

Overnight seventh place goes the way of Olympic debutant Stephane Landois, who is the best of the home nation at this stage of the competition, and whose 24.4 with Chaman Dumontceau was arguably the most poignant moment of the day. He took the ride on after the tragic death of the gelding’s former owner and rider, Thaïs Meheust, who lost her life at the age of 22 in 2019 while contesting the French seven-year-old national championship with the horse.

Since then, they’ve been part of the bronze-medal-winning French team at the European Championships last year on their Senior Championship debut, won Chatsworth’s tough CCI4*-S last spring, and now, made Thaïs’ dream come true by representing her, and their country, at the Paris Olympics –a competition she had dreamed of for so long.

As they finished their test, Stephane bowed his head down to Chaman’s gleaming grey neck, held him in a tight embrace for a moment, and then looked up, somewhere beyond the low-hanging cloud cover, and blew a kiss into the sky as the crowd roared for him, for his horse, for France, and for their much-missed Thaïs.

“I am very, very happy with my ride. There’s a lot of emotion in this place, so coming here has been really quite special — all of us are feeling it,” says Stephane, who guides his team into overnight bronze medal position with his result. “There’s really an emotion that we’re all feeling as we come into the arena. I was really emotional, but proud that there’s a crowd out there that really appreciate the sport and appreciate everybody that comes in. I’m just full of emotion for it, and actually, [the significance of this selection with this horse] has probably given me more strength to come out and to perform well, knowing the history of all of this and the ride.”

Japan’s Yoshiaki Oiwa is very familiar with the business end of Olympic leaderboards –he made history in 2012 by leading the first phase at the Olympics and making the first steps towards putting Japan on the map as an eventing nation. These days, they’re much closer to superstar status – they currently sit fifth of sixteen as a team –and Yoshi’s still here, making it all happen for himself and his country. He sits eighth overnight on a score of 25.5 with MGH Grafton Street, the former ride of Pippa Funnell, with whom he won Burghley in 2019.

“He knew that today, it was the time, you have to show something, so I’m very happy with this,” says Yoshi, who has just four FEI runs under his belt with the sixteen-year-old (OBOS Quality 004 x unknown dam). “It’s a very new partnership, actually. My first competition with him was this year — February or March — so only a few months. It was challenging for us, but it went well, so I’m very, very pleased.”

While ‘Squirrel’ has historically been a mercurial ride, the ability for the pair to build a solid partnership so fast has come down to a couple of factors –Yoshi’s experience, of course, but also the help of Pippa, whose condition for the sale was that the horse would have to stay on her yard, where Yoshi, too, is now based after years in Germany at the yard of Dirk Schrade.

“I went to the previous rider’s place, so the system, everything is the same. She is kind of a legend, Pippa Funnell — so she is the coach for me now, and so his routine is the same as before,” says Yoshi. “Basically, all the team members have been based in Europe for a long time now. We don’t have big shows in Japan, so we all have to come to Europe or another country. This is something that makes it difficult for us to make it. But we all came to Europe long enough now, and everybody is a very experienced rider now. So we hope we can do something here.”

New Zealand’s Clarke Johnstone and his 2022 World Championships ride Menlo Park (Berlin x Faerie Queen, by Rock King) put a 25.7 on the board, bettering their four-star personal best of 27 and guiding the Kiwi team into overnight fourth, to boot.

“He’s been training so well. He’s so with me, he feels amazing in his body, he’s fit but calm, and I’ve been thinking he could do a test like that — to actually do it, I’m just so, so proud of him,” says Clarke. “He’s been to the World Championships, but that was nothing like this. I bravely decided not to pre-ride him this morning, because that’s normally what I would do to get the best out of him — he’s really solid, he always walks — and after I watched the first few go, I thought, ‘Well, that looks very electric in there. Maybe I should pre-ride it.’”

But, he says, “we decided to stick with what we’ve been doing, which has been steadily getting the scores lower and lower over the last couple of years – and he was just so with me. He did have a little look at the gate stewards when I went about to go into the ring, and I thought, ‘Don’t let me down, Jacko.’ He pulled it back, and he was just a delight to ride in there, really on the aids, and just giving me everything.”

That puts him into equal ninth place with Italy’sGiovanni Ugolotti, who has been on an undeniable upward trajectory with the elegant – if slightly inelegantly named –Swirly Temptress. Though this is her first test at the five-star level, their 25.5 bests their form across her four-star career, too, and gave Italy much to celebrate after a heartbreaking morning following Emiliano Portale’s elimination after his ride, Future, bit his tongue in one of the half-passes.

The North American Update

The U.S. riders delivered solid tests today, though certainly some points were left on the board. A collective three-rider score of 88.9 sees them slot into sixth place in team competition, sitting just 7.7 penalties off the podium and 22.2 penalties behind Great Britain in current gold position. Despite any marks left in the dressage ring today, we all well know by now that those could well be long forgotten when the dust and leftover mud from today’s rain settles after cross country.

Latecomer Liz Halliday, who was added to the team after Will Coleman’s withdrawal of Diabolo, secured the top standing for the Americans with The Nutcracker Syndicate’s Nutcracker on a score of 28.0 as the second pair to go for the team. You can read more from Liz’s ride, as well as our pathfinder Caroline Pamukcu, in our midday report here. After starting the day within the top 10, the Liz will be the top-placed in 19th individually, followed by Caroline in 25th and Boyd Martin in 26th.

Boyd was the sole U.S. rider of the afternoon rotations, securing a 30.5 to sit just behind Caroline Pamukcu and HSH Blake in 19th overnight. After enjoying a trending score hovering in the mid-70s percentage during the trot work, Boyd lost ground with two mistakes in the four flying changes that feature in the test. Boyd admits he’s “probably done 20,000 flying changes” in practice, but has historically struggled with the left to right change on this horse.

“We’ve been getting it really good at home and in training, but just when the atmosphere is a bit electric out there,” Boyd said. “He’s got a bit of anxiety, and I think I’ve mistimed my aids a little bit. The same thing happened a Pau. He does get a little bit more electric in the flying changes and it’s a shame. I felt like I gave my all, and it would have been awesome to have four great changes, but it wasn’t to be today. I felt like we still came out of it with a respectable score. But today wasn’t our day in the flying change department. Other than the flying change, I think it was our best work ever.”

“Overall our horses did some very fine work, but it was very competitive and I think it showed that we just weren’t going to be in the top tier today, but I’m still very proud of our athletes and horses,” U.S. chef d’equipe Bobby Costello commented. “The amount of work that they’ve put in this year has been immense and all of these horses will just keep getting better and they will have to be because the world is getting better as well.”

The riders will follow the same rotation they did today on cross country. Bobby explained a bit about the strategy behind the U.S. running order. “I believe that the first two slots in the running order could be very much interchangeable between Caroline and Liz. I think Caroline actually quite likes not to have too much information in her head going out there, so I think that would be a great slot for her, and Liz you could honestly put anywhere and she’s going to perform. I don’t think it was ever a question that Boyd would be our anchor rider with all of his experience of being in that position.”

Canada currently sits in 14th position as a team on a collective score of 106.4, with Mike Winter and Jonathan Nelson, Emma Winter and his own El Mundo (Numero Uno – Calvaro’s Bria Z, by Calvaro Z) currently the top-placed of the team in 42nd on a score of 35.2. Jessica Phoenix and Freedom GS are in 43rd on a score of 35.4 and Karl Slezak and Hot Bobo sit in 46th on a 35.8.

“I was so proud of the composure that she had going into that ring,” Jessie said of the 14-year-old Freedom GS (Humble GS – Friedel GS, by Fidertanz), who is owned by longtime supporter Charlotte Schickedanz. “It’s her first time doing a test at the five star level, and it is by far the biggest atmosphere she’s ever felt. And I was over the moon with how much composure she showed in there, and honestly, how much brilliance she showed in the movements that she’s really solid in. Her future looks bright. She’s one of the most straightforward, competitive thinking mares I’ve ever ridden. Like she fights to do the right thing, and sometimes she just doesn’t have the strength to be able to carry through the movement yet. But like she has the heart, she’s 100% in it, and she’s mentally fighting for you.”

“I was pleased with [Hot Bobo], she was such a good girl — she held it together,” Karl Slezak said of his test with Hot Bobo (Arkansas VDL – Taneys Leader xx, by Supreme Leader xx). “We all know that she can get a bit spooky in the dressage ring, and I thought that she held it together really, really well… Just a little tension [in the flying changes], and specifically the left lead to right lead.”

In terms of the cross country, we’ll have more from the U.S. riders and beyond in Cheg’s Cross Country Riders React column coming later. We’ll be back tomorrow with another Companion Guide to cross country, as well as much more from Paris. In the meantime, you can check out the cross-country ride times in full here and have a walk around the course with us in our full preview here. Cross-country will begin at 10.30 a.m. CET (9.30 a.m. BST/4.30 a.m. EST) with Germany’sJulia Krajewski andNickel 21(15th on a 26.9) pathfinding. This is a tightly packed field with 22 horses and riders sitting sub-30, so we’ll be expecting a huge amount of movement across the leaderboard throughout the day.

Stay tuned, and Go Eventing.

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