The last few weeks following selection is always a stressful time for anyone involved, trying to keep horses and riders fit whilst preparing for optimum performance. As a reserve, Loki and I had to be as prepared and ready as the Team. And this year we had the added pressure of trying to avoid Covid as we’d have to pass pre-flight tests in order to be able to go. So with quarantine and isolation as well, once the horses were loaded onto the lorry and on their way to Belgium, I was definitely ready to get out of the Team bubble and do anything normal / non-Tokyo related!
The one positive to come out of not having any audiences allowed at the Games was that the coverage was fantastic. I’d been first reserve for Rio in 2016 and remember vividly having to watch the online results or get updates from people out there just to know what was going on. Having been part of the journey it was a small reward to be able to watch the action on live stream. I enjoyed a slightly more relaxed few weeks of training Loki, work, a bit of teaching and alternating between live stream screens. As everyone will be aware by now there were a few last-minute changes that happened in quarantine (just to add to the drama) but a strong team went out there and what incredible results they delivered.
Everyone went out with their own challenges, goals and expectations and I was thrilled to see them all go and achieve what I’d suspected was possible. The individual competition gave an exciting preview of what might be possible with the Team, and what a finish it turned out to be. Great Britain finished 0.6% ahead of the Dutch team, which was strangely the same difference that the Dutch led by at the 2018 World Equestrian Games when we had to settle for Silver.
It was an outstanding result for the British team who quite frankly all went with the goal of ‘hopefully medalling’ with their three inexperienced horses, but they all delivered personal bests and performances to be proud of in order to secure that coveted Gold medal and Paralympic title. The standard of both horsepower and riding has continued to improve and there were some impressive combinations across the grades from all Nations. With the start of a new (slightly shorter) Paralympic cycle I think the next few years will be exciting for all Nations as we build up to the Paris Olympics.