16 days to go!

Mary King and her Olympic ride Imperial Cavalier

With the Olympics a mere couple of weeks away many predictions as to who is going to take the medals are beginning to circulate. In the Equestrian disciplines our teams appear to be the strongest they’ve ever been and our chance of clinching the gold seems as likely as ever. Before the Olympics have even begun our Eventing team has been blighted with injury and controversy, with the sad withdrawal of Piggy French after injury of both Jakata and DHI Topper W. The surprise initial rejection of Nicola Wilson and everyone’s favourite Opposition Buzz had rather a bittersweet ending when they managed to secure a place on the team when Piggy was forced to pull out. The final team is Tina Cook with Miners Frolic, William Fox-Pitt with Lionheart, Mary King with Imperial Cavalier, Zara Phillips with High Kingdom and Nicola Wilson with Opposition Buzz. We now must pray they all stay safe and sound in the short run up to the games, I do believe it’s time to bubble wrap the horses!

Andrew Nicholson on his way to a win at Barbury

With all of the predictions circulating it’s time for me to name mine (or attempt to, at least). I must say it’s a difficult decision, the performances from so many riders across the nations have been astounding recently. We saw Andrew Nicholson take a 1,2 in the CIC*** at Barbury earlier this month, Christopher Burton winning Aachen on his sub-40 dressage score and Michael Jung achieving a 1,2 at Luhmuhlen in June. Their nations; New Zealand, Australia and Germany respectively, are perhaps Great Britain’s toughest competition for the Gold medal. The New Zealand team is particularly strong, consisting of Jock Paget with Clifton Promise, Caroline Powell and Lenamore, Andrew Nicholson and Nereo, Jonelle Richards and Flintstar and Mark Todd and NZB Campino. Their form recently, particularly Andrew Nicholson’s makes them favourable for the top spot at Greenwich, but the German team are unlikely to make this easy for them. Known for their admirable dressage scores the top of the leaderboard after the first day of competition is likely to feature a number of German names, notably Michael Jung (recently 3rd at Aachen) who rides La Biosthetique Sam FBW (a horse who’s name proves a challenge for the 140 character limit on Twitter). Jung is looking to add to his collection of golds – notably his individual title at the 2010 World Equestrian Games as well as his individual and team gold at the 2011 Europeans. With this form, he is perhaps favourite to take the individual Gold. Despite this and the obvious strengths of both New Zealand and Germany our British team are also in with a fighting chance of standing on the top spot of the podium on the 31st July. William Fox-Pitt (1st at Kentucky, Bramham and Tattersalls this year) is looking stronger than ever and despite two of his qualified horses out with injury (Oslo and Cool Mountain), William is still a favourite for a medal. The Brits as a team are exceptionally strong and I would love for them to clinch the team gold, an achievement I believe is highly likely.

I look forward to the forthcoming games which are now scarily close (the announcement that we’d won the bid feels like yesterday!), and wish a safe build up for all horses and riders competing. I leave you with a cracking video from Barbury last weekend, where Clayton Fredericks performs quite a stunt...