The Great Britain three-day-event team, criticised for their "under-performance" in the past two Olympic Games, silenced their critics today when they won the silver medal after a superb all-round performance over four days of intense competition in the blazing heat of Horsley Park.
Although they failed to catch the Australians, whose third successive gold medal has created Olympic history, there was no disguising the joy - and relief - in the British camp after capturing their first Olympic medal since the silver in 1988.
"I’m very proud of the riders and their horses - it was a fantastic performance," Yogi Breisner, the team manager, said. "We may not have got the gold but we are delighted with the silver." The United States, managed by Mark Phillips, captured the bronze medal after New Zealand had to withdraw.
Remarkably, the three riders responsible for Britain’s medal - Jeanette Brakewell with Over To You, Pippa Funnell, who had the best overall performance in the team with her European champion Supreme Rock, and Leslie Law with Shear H20 were all competing at their first Olympic Games.
"It’s just a wonderful feeling," Law, 35, said. "Britain has taken a lot of criticism after failing to win a medal in Atlanta and Barcelona but now we’ve shown we are still one of the best teams."
Jeanette Brakewell, 26, was still trying to take it all in. "I can’t quite believe it," she said as she studied her silver medal. It was Brakewell who had spearheaded the British challenge with her superb opening cross-country round yesterday.
Funnell was wearing an ear-to-ear grin, and deservedly so. She and Emma Pitt’s outstanding 12-year-old gelding produced the best performance in the team, just as they had when winning the European championships last year. Funnell demonstrated her superb horsemanship with her cross-country round when, after a mistake at the first water, she hung grimly on to complete the course without faults.
The final showjumping day is always tense - and the drama begun early. Britain’s Ian Stark was unable to complete the competition when his horse Jaybee was found to have twisted his fetlock joint, the legacy of his dramatic fall at the first water complex on yesterday’s cross-country.
Stark, 46, who embarks tomorrow on his quest for individual success on his second horse, Arakai, was philosophical. "At least it’s me - and not one of the other team members." He was relieved that Jenny Hall, the British team vet, did not consider the injury serious although the horse was being taken to a nearby clinic for an precautionary X-ray.
New Zealand, who had been lying in the bronze medal position overnight, had a devastating morning. Paul O’Brien’s Enzed was not presented at the final horse inspection and - in one of the most poignant moments of these equestrian Olympics - Blyth Tait’s 1996 Olympic champion Ready Teddy was clearly lame behind and failed the inspection. It left them without a team - a bitter blow for the squad who, having won a team silver in Barcelona and a team bronze in Atlanta, had started out with high hopes of gold.
With their third member Vaughn Jefferis controversially withdrawing his horse, Bounce, before the start of the showjumping, Mark Todd, winner of the individual gold in 1984 and 1988, was the only team member to complete. He followed his outstanding cross-country performance on his 1999 Burghley winner Diamond Hall Red with one mistake in the showjumping - to be greeted with tumultous praise. He makes his last appearance in the sport in the individual contest tomorrow when he competes with Eye-Spy II.
At the start of the showjumping, Britain was in the silver medal position - but only 12.8 points behind Australia. If the Australians had three fences down - and the British were clear - Britain would win the gold. With the three British riders all known to be more than competent showjumpers the big and technically demanding 13-fence showjumping course raised hopes that Britain might yet be able to dislodge the Australians.
Those hopes were increased when Matt Ryan the first Australian rider collected 12 faults over the course and their second rider Phillip Dutton on House Doctor had an unexpected 16. But, as Funnell said later: "We were clearly meant to get the silver." Brakewell, a reliable showjumper, just clipped the middle part of the combination and also collected five time faults on Over To You. Law collected 10 penalties with mistakes at Fences 5a and 12 and Funnell, despite the best efforts of her showjumping husband William who had helped her in the practise arena, also had 10 penalties - at the second part of both combinations - as well as incurring three time faults.
The Australians meanwhile gained their best performance from Stuart Tinney, the newcomer to the team on Jeepster, who had only one mistake at Fence 9. Even so, there was huge tension when Andrew Hoy, their most experienced rider, entered the arena. His magnificent grey gelding, Darien Powers, whose copybook round on Monday’s cross-country had done much to inspire the team, is not noted for his showjumping ability. At Badminton in May he had three fences down. Should the worst happen and he hit six fences Australia would lose the gold.
A deathly hush descended on the arena as Hoy set off in the brilliant sunshine. Safely over the first seven fences the huge crowd started to scent victory. But then Fences 8b and 8c fell - followed by Fence 11.
But Hoy, a veteran of five Olympic Games, collected the big grey for the last two fences and, safely over the last, the arena erupted as they acclaimed the historic third gold medal. "They said we couldn’t do it after Barcelona. Then we won it again in Atlanta," their delighted team manager Wayne Roycroft said as he was mobbed by wellwishers. "They said we couldn’t do it after Atlanta and we’ve done it again here."
Jenny MacArthur in Sydney
The Times
Funnell shoulders responsibility in true British style
Call it Ryder Cup Syndrome: one of those sporting events when the participants are weighed down by an unfamiliar and overwhelming sense of responsibility. Great Britain’s horsey legions have established in recent years a venerable tradition of, to use the local vernacular, stuffing it up at the Olympic Games. There hasn’t been an equestrianism medal since 1988. Until today, that is.
And in the three-day event, it is Ryder Cup Syndrome that has done for them. Both three-day eventing and golf are essentially private matters: one coming back to the individual, the other to the intense relationship between individual rider and individual horse.
The Ryder Cup forces a self-absorbed golfer to think about that impossible thing, other people. The team version of three-day eventing is still stranger: it forces a rider to take responsibility for other horses as well.
And for many, it is more than they can bear. The Olympic Games carry twice the pressure as the Ryder Cup, because it is twice as scarce, coming only every four years. The record of failure has built up an enormous amount of pressure. So the silver medal Britain won in the team three-day event can hardly be regarded as a disappointment. It has been a significant triumph over the fear of failure.
The Brits won silver in Los Angeles in 1984 as if by right, and when they won silver again in Seoul four years later, it was nothing less than anybody expected. Jolly well done and all that, but we were rather hoping for gold.
But a series of disasters followed, mostly in the venomous cross-country section. Competitors, caught, like a cat in an adage, between too cautious and too bold, labouring under the unfamiliar burden of responsibility, simply went ahead and stuffed it up. Fear is the quickest way in sport to find bad luck.
This, then, was a triumphant fanfare, even if it is one in a minor key. The competitors initially seemed to feel it as a relief more than anything else: an end to 12 years of gloom.
Strange how the preparations of four years, or if you prefer, 12 years, or, if you prefer, a lifetime, come down to events that take place in less than a second.
And it may not even be your problem, not in a team event. You can have got everything right in your preparation over the four years span, over the lifetime of the relationship between you and your horse - and you have your moment of fulfilment snatched away by somebody else in your own team.
Somebody who is doing the best he can for you: that is the terrible inhibiting truth about this event. Kipling talked about filling the unforgiving minute: for the British, it was - as it always is in sport - a matter of the unforgiving nanosecond.
It was Ian Stark who was unforgiven: Stark, who has ridden with such immaculate courage in the team event in every Olympics since his first Games in Los Angeles in 1984. His horse, Jaybee, caught a hind leg on the water obstacle and that was that. The horse crashed more or less in slow motion into the water, Stark rather magnificently still in the saddle, as if he thought the horse might still somehow find an extra leg to stand on. Like a good captain, he went down with his ship: and glug-a-glug went the gold medal.
Complete disaster was averted by a similar nanosecond. Pippa Funnell’s horse Supreme Rock making a mistake in the water complex and Funnell’s, whose jodhpurs must be coated with Bostick, majestically stayed on board. And the silver medal stayed on with her. “I didn’t come all this way to fall off,” she repeated obsessively afterwards.
The Australians had a substantival lead after cross-country: the gold was theirs, barring disasters. I suppose Britain might have won by default: but you feel such a heel sitting there willing people to stuff it up, particularly when they are decent people and lovely horses.
It was a triumph for Australia, and a well-deserved one: third gold in succession and all that. They kept their nerve in the fraught showjumping competition of the final day, and that was that.
In truth, the British never really turned the screw: three clear rounds might just have caused the Australians to muse on the concepts of nanoseconds and responsibility. But the course was cleverly designed, very far from straightforward, and it only surrendered three clear rounds all day.
It is a difficult finicky thing to do, to ride a stride-perfect showjumping course. To do so after the wild and exhausting extravagance of the cross-country the day before is one of the hardest things in the horsey world: hot courage must transmute overnight into cold nerve.
By the time the medal ceremony was over, relief was making its slow transformation into euphoria, amid brave talk that this was just the start of the Great British Horsey resurgences. “Gold just wasn’t meant to be this time,” Funnell said.
"The best thing was the way we established silver medal position right from the start and held it all the way," Jeanette Brakewell said. But before this she had expressed the opinion that the best thing was “probably getting hammered tonight”. It is, after all, much to get hammered after a competition than during it. The Brits may not have beaten the Aussies, but they beat their own history. And that is worth raising a glass for.
Simon Barnes in Sydney
The Times
Stark hoping to make amends
Tomorrow the individual contest for the Olympic three-day-event begins, in which Britain has three leading contenders - Mary King with Star Appeal, the winner of Badminton this year, Ian Stark with Arakai, his 1997 European team gold medal-winner, and Karen Dixon with Too Smart, the runner-up at Burghley last year.
Ian Stark makes a mistake at the first section of the water © Marc Aspland
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Blyth Tait, of New Zealand, who won the gold on Ready Teddy in Atlanta - the first time the team and individual competitions were held as separate events - will defend his title on Welton Envoy. Other leading contenders in the 35-strong field include his compatriot Mark Todd, who rides Eye Spy II in a bid to end his career with a record third individual gold medal, Andrew Hoy of Australia, a triple team gold medal-winner, with Swizzle In and Sweden’s Paula Tornquist with SAS Monaghan, winners of the individual bronze medal both at the 1998 world championships and at the European championships last year.
Stark, who is hoping to make amends in this contest for his costly fall from Jaybee in the team competition, is the only one of the three Britons to have achieved individual honours. He won the silver medal in Seoul on Sir Wattie - the last occasion when Britain won an individual equestrian medal.
King, after two unsuccessful Games, is still seeking to fulfil her Olympic ambitions. Although Star Appeal is 15 - and not a thoroughbred - she is confident that he will suit the course. "He may be a more common horse than many here but he’s never had a stamina problem in a four-star event - the excitement of the competition seems to lift him."
Dixon, competing in her fourth Olympic Games, is equally hungry for success. Her best place to date was sixth in Barcelona on Get Smart. In Atlanta, riding Too Smart, she was a member of the team which finished fifth. Too Smart is one of the most talented horses in the field and if Dixon repeats the form she showed when finishing third in the British Open last month a medal is well within her grasp.
The competition gets under way tomorrow with the dressage. The cross-country, which involves the same track as the team competition but over different fences, is on Thursday and the final showjumping phase on Friday.
Jenny MacArthur in Sydney
The Times
