France claimed their second team gold in the equestrian events in Rio 2016, winning the team jumping a week after claiming the honours in the team eventing competition.
By the time the first three team members, Philippe Rozier, Kevin Staut and Roger Yves Bost had jumped, they had already secured the gold medal. Final rider Penelope Leprevost – who is out of the individual competition after a fall
The French have won team gold just once before, at Montreal in 1976. That year, Jean-Marcel Rozier was on the team, and this year his son Philippe was on the gold medal-winning team in Rio. “My father was here in Rio, and we are all feeling very proud to have another gold medal in our family,” said Philippe.
Roger Yves Bost added: “I wasn’t sure what the score was, I just went in to do my job and the medal just came to me.”
The USA also claimed team silver after three riders – their fourth rider Beezie Madden had withdrawn Cortes C because of an injury, leaving the Americans no margin for error. But despite being down to just three on their team, they posted a score of five faults.
“Beezie has been our anchor for the better part of a decade and her record of coming through for us is second to none,” said the USA’s McLain Ward. “But we thought we had a strong team, strong horses. And we thought the course was brilliant today – it was real Olympic calibre team jumping. So we are very proud.”
Germany and Canada had to jump-off for the bronze medal, after both teams finished on eight faults. Here the Germans showed their utter poise and skill, netting three clear rounds from their first three riders. Tiffany Foster jumped clear on the British-bred Tripple X III, but when two of the Canadian riders had a fence down, it dropped them off the medal podium.
Brazil came fifth ahead of Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden.
Brazil’s Guilherme Jorge was the course designer, and he set a very tricky course with an extremely tight time, which proved influential. “The course was difficult yesterday and today we had four teams on zero, so I stepped up the degree of difficulty and played with the time allowed. We had a good result with a number of clears and it shows how high the level of the riders and horses were today,” he said.
Britain did not qualify for the second day of the team competition, but two riders were in action today as individuals. A five fault round for Nick Skelton and Big Star, and one time penalty for Ben Maher and Tic Tac was good enough to see them through to the final day of competition on Friday.
The results from today will determine their starting order for the next round, but apart from that the scores are set to zero – meaning Team GB’s dreams of winning another equestrian medal aren’t over yet.