Laura Collett and London 52 were simply sensational during their Paris Olympics cross-country round. As second team member for Great Britain, Laura and the 15-year-old she co-owns with Keith Scott and Karen Bartlett put in an almost faultless round on day two of the Olympic eventing competition.
Laura and London finished two seconds over the 9min 2sec optimum time, picking up .8 of a time-fault to now sit on 18.3. This means that should Michael Jung and Chipmunk FRH jump clear inside the time later this afternoon, Laura will be demoted from her dressage lead into second as Michael currently has a score of 17.8 after the first phase.
“That was amazing and London is just my horse of a lifetime,” said an emotional Laura. “He’s just incredible. I can’t really believe we’ve just done that, to be honest. I’m just relieved that it’s over and I haven’t let anyone down.”
Laura said that the crowds were “unbelievable” and that it was a “buzz from start to finish”.
The 34-year-old rider, who won team gold on London 52 at the Tokyo Olympics has produced this gelding since he was a young horse.
“I think for me, knowing what he was like as a young horse and knowing how much he’s had to trust me and believe in me – he’s not a natural cross-country horse and then he goes around a course like that on railway tracks, so it just shows what a partnership you can build up and you can make them believe in you,” she explained. “I have full faith in him now, which means I can go and enjoy myself out there.”
Laura said that the optimum tight is “tight” but that London 52 losing a front shoe early on course didn’t help her to finish inside the time.
“There are a couple of places where you can really let them gallop, but there are an awful lot of twists and turns and after he lost a shoe, he was slipping all over the place. That meant I had to be quite careful on those turns and really kill the speed to get around the trees without doing anything stupid like slipping over.”
Speaking of London’s lost shoe, Laura stated: “Fingers crossed the team will get him sorted tonight and yes, it’s not not ideal, but it just shows what a good horse he is.”
On the Pierre Le Goupil-designed Olympic cross-country track, Laura said it had provoked a lot of “head scratching”.
“To be honest, up until this morning I was planning to jump the right hand corner coming out of the second water [at fence 10 – The Vauban Citadel], but I watched a few jump it and it looked like the striding to the left corner was just a bit easier and more obvious for the horses so I changed my mind.”
Laura also said her plan as always to go off the left-hand side drop at the influential fence 16abcd, The Viewpoint over the Grand Canal.
“I was always very much wanting to jump left off the drop – I just felt like the ditch was a bit of a nothing ditch and there were too many unknown circumstances there for how horses would read it and jump it with only two strides to the triple brush out. I just thought that was an unnecessary risk, so for me that was always plan A and stuck to it and it rode really nicely.”
Laura’s phenomenal two-phase score, paired with British pathfinder Tom McEwen’s clear round inside the time with JL Dublin means that after the second rotation of team riders, the British team has a commanding lead over the rest of the field with France in second and Japan in third.
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