TEAM GB secured their first gold of the Paris Olympics 2024 as they successfully defended their team eventing title from Tokyo – and did it at a Ros Canter.
In a week where equestrian was marred by the whip scandal surrounding Charlotte Dujardin, the British trio of Canter, Laura Collett and Tom McEwen put the distractions behind them to keep full focus on the task at hand.
The gold medal comes as Team GB‘s first after the likes of Adam Peaty and Tom Daley had to settle for silvers.
They went into the jumping, the final stage of the team eventing – after Saturday’s dressage and Sunday’s cross country – top of the pile with just 82.50 penalty points.
That had them nearly five points clear of France on 87.20.
It would have been even more had Canter not been slapped with a controversial ‘Flag-gate’ 15-point penalty on Sunday for clipping a flag in the cross country with her knee despite her horse Lordships Graffalo successfully making the jump.
But in today’s jumping, world No1 Canter got back on track and was the first of the Brits to go around the 500m 16-fence course here in the baking sunshine of Versailles.
She only hit just the sixth fence – sparking a four-point penalty which also kicks in for the individual jumping event – but galloped across the final fence 1.93 seconds inside the 80-second limit.
And as nearest rivals France clattered into two fences, Team GB extended their lead.
Collett and McEwen were both part of the golden squad of 2021.
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France’s Karim Florent Laghouag put the pressure back on with an effort that had this partizan Parisian crowd stomping their feet in delight.
But McEwen halted their excitement when he responded immediately with an utterly faultless, rapid run.
His horse JL Dublin cleared all the fences in exactly 76 seconds before wagging his finger in celebration at the crowd.
Special stuff from the 33-year-old as GB opened the gap from France to 12.7 points with just Collett to go.
Collett was the last of the 58 riders and knew it was in her hands to get Team GB over the line.
The Leamington Spa star, 34, nearly died in tragic scenes in 2013 when she was crushed in a heavy horse fall.
She needed to be resuscitated five times, received an emergency tracheotomy and was placed in an induced coma for six days after breaking her shoulder and ribs, puncturing a lung and lacerating a liver.
The rider was also left blind in her right eye when a fragment of her shoulder bone detached and travelled through her bloodstream, damaging the optic nerve.
Eight years later, she won gold in Tokyo on her horse London 52.
And here in the grounds of the Chateau de Versailles, Collett had four fences because Stephane Landois knocked down a rail on the ninth and give the French a score of 103.60.
So it came to Collett with GB starting on 86.50 and she cleared all 15 fences before ironically nicking the last one.
But that was enough for a score of 91.30 overall and means she is now a two-time Olympic champion in a staggering comeback story – and Team GB have got that first gold of the Games.
After sealing the medal, Collett admitted her joy in her first interview.
She told the BBC: “I’m on top of the world. I have never ridden into an atmosphere like that. we brought it home.”
Canter admitted that she could not bare to watch the final run as the nerves got the best of her, so she hid.
She joked: “I hid during the last run it was terrifying.”
