Gold! Britain retains Paralympic team title in mighty tussle with the Netherlands

Martha Terry's avatar
By
Published In News
The British team with their gold medals on the podium after the Paralympic dressage team competition at the Tokyo Paralympic Games
The British team win gold at the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021
(Image credit: BEF/Jon Stroud Media)

Britain extended her unbeaten golden run at the Tokyo Paralympics, taking the top spot in the Paralympics dressage team competition by a whisker. Team GB’s three team riders, Lee Pearson, Natasha Baker and Sophie Wells held off the Dutch challenge by just 0.656%.

This time round, gold was far from a certainty, as Britain had lost its aura of invincibility at the previous World and European Championships, when the Netherlands took gold. With a team of inexperienced horses, Britain was aiming for the podium, but the gold was always going to be a bonus given the strength of the other teams.

Martha Terry
Martha Terry
Features editor

Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.