Nick Skelton, who won team gold at London 2012 and individual gold at Rio 2016, looks beyond some overzealous stewards to a dazzling Paris Games
Paris 2024 will sit right up there as one of the best Olympics I’ve been to. From the excellent facilities for the horses to the beautiful backdrop, the showjumping was superb.
I’ve always been against the new three-rider team format, much preferring to have a drop score, but it worked really well in Paris with an element of sudden death – one fault and you’re out – that made it so exciting.
I’ve never seen Great Britain’s trio of Ben Maher, Scott Brash and Harry Charles ride better, and for Scott to coax every last ounce of reserves from Jefferson – who would be far from an easy ride – under immense pressure to win gold showed superb horsemanship.
Course-designers Santiago Varela and Grégory Bodo deserve a medal too. The fences were beautiful and they did an excellent job throughout. The final day’s track was as big as I’ve seen but perfectly pitched – to get three clears for three medals is the ultimate goal in course-building but no mean feat.
I thought Steve Guerdat was going to win and the crowd really got behind him, but that was a very hard turnback to the vertical in the jump-off. Christian Kukuk is a very good rider and has won some big grands prix with Checker 47, so he was a worthy winner. Then for Maikel van der Vleuten to win his second individual Olympic bronze medal is an amazing achievement, albeit with a hint of heartbreak that he’s twice come so close to gold.
It was such a shame to watch my partner Laura Kraut just miss out at the last fence in the individual final with Baloutinue, who I’d never seen jump better – such were the highs and lows.
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I did smile hearing a BBC presenter say it was Great Britain’s first team showjumping gold since 2012 when really it was only our second in 72 years. But we’ve secured four gold medals at the past four Games, so let’s hope our governing body British Showjumping capitalises on this success, gets our shows back on a par with those in mainland Europe and makes us the envy of the world once again.
Just let us ride
Understandably, horse welfare was at the forefront of everyone’s minds at these Games. I’m all for correct procedures to make sure it remains a top priority, but the only slight dampener in Paris was what I would call some overzealous stewarding.
Take Laura for example – she loves her horses. They follow her round the stable at home, where they receive five-star treatment. But she and these other professional riders were instructed every day as to how they should and shouldn’t be working their horses, who, like any human athlete, need their bodies to be stretched, flexed and thoroughly warmed-up.
We’re doing nothing wrong, but there’s a fear that we could be seen to be by do-gooders who think we use and abuse our beloved horses.
After the dust has settled on these Games, the FEI needs to look at the blood rule because having it so black and white isn’t fair. I saw the tiny mark situated under the horse’s girth for which Brazil’s Pedro Veniss was eliminated in the team contest. It was a bitter pill to swallow for him. But imagine if, for example, Scott, having secured gold, had then been found to have a tiny rub mark and they later had to announce their elimination?
VAR for stewards?
If the stewards had a direct line to the judges and a video assistant referee (VAR)-style replay available for any horse found to have blood on it, they could look at each case clearly to ascertain where and why it happened.
Occasionally a rider will be at fault, in which case that’s a clear elimination, but horses don’t jump these huge fences on their own. If you don’t help your horse, he’s just as likely to land on a back rail and hurt himself, which is far worse than an accidental spur mark.
We may be walking a tightrope, but in Paris we came together to showcase our sport in an extremely positive light with 20,000 people packing the stands each day in support. What more could you want?
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The reigning Olympic showjumping champion enjoyed a phenomenal career spanning more than 40 years until his retirement from the sport in 2017. Having won team gold at the London Olympics in 2012, he went on to win the individual title at the age of 58 at his seventh Games in Rio in 2016 riding Big Star. Nick won 20 championship medals, represented Great Britain in 173 Nations Cups and triumphed in a glittering array of grands prix. He was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List in 2017.
