Going for Gold!!

On day 10 of the olympics we did a tremendous achievement on gaining a TEAM GOLD for the Equestrian Show Jumping!! The British team was lead By Nick Skelton (52) Riding Big Star, with a fantastic team around him; Ben Maher on Tripple X, Scott Brach on Hello Sanctos and Peter Charles on Vindicat. Winning Team GB there 17th Gold medal of the home Olympics and the first gold medal in Show Jumping in 60 years since 1952, and our first medal in show jumping in 28 years. The Home crowd is certainly paying off this year especially within the equestrian games. Now having won 2 Golds and a Silver medal. With that electrifying atmosphere which is just pushing the team to be the best they can be, and its been working so far!

The Team winning a Well Deserved Gold!

The rules of the show jumping course is you must jump a course of between 500m-600m long containing 12-16 jumps/combinations. The lowest score wins so you need to avoid gaining penalty points from knocking down jumps or a first refusal which can cost you 4 faults. Also the time is very tight in these courses so for every 4 seconds you go over the time you gain 1 fault. 

Bob Ellis an international course designer was behind this makings of this tasking course, giving all the riders and horses a run for there money. it was defiantly an olympic course full of twists and turns 1m90cm spreads withs jumps at 1m58cm which is astonishing thats the same size as me if not slightly bigger!! The whole course had a London/ British theme to it, the water jump for example was based on the white cliffs of Dover which was 4m 30cm Wide!! there was a Darwin Jump, a London Montage and even a Stonehenge combination. 

Nick Skelton one of the older team members is lucky to be here competing at the olympics or even to be back on a horse, as he also like Mary King broke his neck in 2001 and was in a neck brace for a long time, he is lucky to be walking never mind winning a Gold for Britain. And he almost won the individual medal as well however he just missed out on getting placed by getting 4 faults. He did a great job on landing 5th however still thrilled he got a gold for the team as that is what he came for to get a gold after 6 olympics and 52 years. 

Nick Skelton Jumping the London Montage

The team played a Good competition with the nail bitting finish in the jump off against the Netherlands. A very Close competition with the two countries being neck and neck through out most of the competition. But Nick Skelton put the pressure on as first out in the jump off getting a fast clear round and from then on it was in the bag. Winning the well deserved Gold medal with 3 clear round and 4 faults from the Jump off the final member of the Netherlands didn't even had to go out as team GB had already Won. Ben Maher a very elegant rider on his home bred horse, Peter Charles who originally competed for Ireland but decided to change nationalities to Great Britian, and of course Scott Brash from Scotland and the youngest member of the team all contributed to this fantastic achievement  for Team GB that will go down in the History books. 

Scott Brash Jumping the Darwin Jump

Ashley J