You rate him quite highly, don’t you, asked a colleague. Pretty highly, yes. How high is that? Oh, I said, Pele, Ali, that sort of level.
So being there for his last ride was just a little special - and truly splendid and appropriate that I was able to see him winning an Olympic medal. It was a bronze in the individual three-day event, and - deeply though he would resent it - there was something appropriate in that, too.
Mark Todd, I’m talking about. The finest competitive rider ever, in any horsey discipline, racing included. He announced a year ago that he would give it one more year of competition - he is now 44 - and would retire after these Games.
It is not just me that has these high opinions of Todd. His final year has been a sustained coda of honours, including the award of event rider of the century from the International Equestrian Federation. But his stately award-strewn passage to a dignified retirement in his homeland of New Zealand has been marred by the horror of personal scandal.
And it was the full 21st century version. One of the British tabloids ran a story packed with salacious "sex’n’drugs" allegations. Scandals like this destroy not just reputations but lives.
Three-day eventing has a reputation for decent, untainted people: approachable, easy to be with, thoroughly decent types. Nobody was prepared for this.
Of course, the only reason the paper ran the story is because of horses. A similar scandal about a New Zealand Greco-Roman wrestler would not have made the paper. It was the popular equation of horses with wealth and royalty that made the story a goer in a poor news week. Because of that, Toddy’s last ride has been tainted.
And do you know what? I don’t give a stuff. I don’t even care whether or not it’s true. So far as I am concerned, my admiration for Todd is undiminished, and so is my liking for him.
If he happens to be a flawed human being, well, he is in the company of several billion of us. And if he happens to be a flawed genius, that makes him a pretty rare kind of human being, but it is the only type of genius you get.
What concerned me was the question of whether his family life would hold up against the strain. It did my heart good to see the excellent Carolyn in the collecting ring at the finish, and to talk to her and hear her ecstatic relief at the result. She is solid as a rock, and that was news every bit as good as the medal.
Todd performed with the solidity we have come to expect, finishing today with a clear round on Eye Spy II in the showjumping phase, plus a couple of time penalties. It was good enough, and New Zealand’s first medal of the Games.
An amazing press conference followed in which the bulk of the questions went to the bronze medal-winner, and those that went to the gold and silver recipients swere mainly about Todd. "He’s got the ability to bring the best out of the horse on the day," said Andrew Hoy (Australia, silver). "You can teach technique," said David O’Connor (gold, United States), "but you can’t teach art. Mark Todd is an artist."
I am always asked one question by the non-horsey at these events. How much of the sport is the horse, and how much the rider? I usually quote the Richie Benaud theory of cricket captaincy: "It’s 90 per cent luck and 10 per cent skill. But for God’s sake don’t try it without the 10 per cent".
Todd’s genius is that he has been able to apply that necessary 10 per cent of human skill to horse after horse after horse, and bringing the best out of every one. He has won two individual gold medals, two minor medals with the New Zealand team, three Badmintons, five Burghleys. He has won 25 events, which is ridiculous; nobody else is even close. But perhaps even more significantly, in event after event, he has been among the minor placings with a horse that has done the best it could.
Inevitably, relief was his first emotion. He admitted that he was uncharacteristically nervous before the previous day’s cross-country round, a thoroughly understandable touch of last-lap nerves. He confided to his fellow-riders on the podium that this was the only bit he would really miss, but that wasn’t, perhaps, entirely serious.
Now he moves back to New Zealand to breed horses, and do all the stuff of the horsey business: buying, improving, selling on, increasing his involvement with racing. He had wanted to be a jockey but at 6ft 4in, he was a bit on the tall side.
This troubled final year has left people in a great deal of confusion but, at least yesterday, a consensus was clear. Neither audience, nor anybody in the horsey business, nor even anybody in the press, gave a stuff any more than I did. They simply revelled in the final performance of a great Olympian.
He was cheered to the echo, and by an Australian crowd at that. It was worth cheering: we really won’t see his like again. Athletes reveal a deeper and more relevant truth about themselves when they compete than anything that could be revealed by a scandal-sheet.
Simon Barnes
The Times
O'Connor lost on way to gold
David O’Connor, riding his 1997 Badminton winner Custom Made, survived a heart-stopping moment in the final showjumping phase of the Olympic individual three-day-event contest to become the first rider from the United States to win the individual gold medal since Tad Coffin on Bally Cor in 1976.
The 38-year-old Virginian, who had led from the start on his Irish-bred gelding after earning a record dressage score of 29, lost his way halfway round the 13-fence course - coming virtually to a standstill after Fence 6 as he looked anxiously around for the next fence. He recovered just in time - to the visible relief of his trainer Mark Phillips - and completed the rest of the course with only one mistake - to secure the gold. "I was nervous and my mind went blank," O’Connor said before being mobbed by well-wishers in the collecting ring.
In a superb result for the sport, Australia’s Andrew Hoy, a triple team gold medal-winner - and the darling of the 20,000-strong crowd who braved the blazing heat at Horsley Park - took the silver medal after a copybook clear round on Swizzle-In, a horse who had not competed in a four-star event until these Games. Mark Todd, New Zealand’s dual gold medal-winner, missed out on the silver medal by a margin of three time faults, but ensured he bowed out of the sport in a manner befitting his stature when he and Eye Spy II took the individual bronze medal.
Phillips, 52 yesterday, has trained the US team since 1993 and was visibly moved as he watched O’Connor secure the gold. "It’s the perfect birthday present," he said. It is also a huge boost for three-day eventing in the United States which has been "on a roll" under Phillips’s management. Having had a dismal showing in Barcelona in 1992, he has turned the team around to win silver in Atlanta and now team bronze and the individual gold.
Britain had also thought they were "on a roll" after the silver medal in the team competition but the disappointing dressage performances of the three riders in the individual contest effectively scuppered any chance of a medal. Mary King produced the best performance, finishing seventh on Star Appeal - they made one mistake at the first part of the combination on the showjumping. Ian Stark on Arakai, who also had five faults, was tenth, and Karen Dixon dropped to eleventh place when Too Smart, knocked Fences 6 and 10a.
"It’s very disappointing," King said. "We really thought we all had a chance this time." Stark, who now retires from team riding, shared King’s disappointment. "We could have done it, but we didn’t," he said, adding, "I’m glad it’s all over. It’s been fantastic fun but it will be a relief not to be fighting for a place in the team any more." Dixon, who also produced one of the best performances of her career in the cross country, said wearily, "Athens seems a long time to wait for another try."
No rider put a braver face on disappointment than Heidi Antikatzidis, of Greece, who had been in the silver medal position overnight but dropped to sixth place when Michaelmas, attempting the quick route at Fences 6 and 7, hit both obstacles. "It’s the only mistake he’s made all week," she said. Brynley Powell, her British trainer, was equally despondent. "I told her to take that route. I thought it would work better for her horse."
Phillips had also been concerned about the two fences and told O’Connor, who had a fence in hand before his final round, to take the longer route because the Irish-bred Custom Made is not always reliable at fences "on lines". It was the relief at clearing Fence 7 that prompted O’Connor to forget the course. Despite his recovery he was so annoyed - and shaken - by his aberration that he still looked ashen-faced as he galloped round the arena on his victory lap, the Stars and Stripes flung round his shoulders. "My head was still sore from being on a swivel looking for the next fence," he said.
Jenny MacArthur
The Times
