Well, the bubble had to burst some time. After our specialist dressage squad’s best ever championship in Rotterdam the week before, Britain’s 16-year gold medal-winning run in European eventing ended in Luhmuehlen.
Germany ran away with the European team title and the top four individual slots, headed by world champion Michael Jung (La Biosthetique Sam). Even by the closing stages of first-phase dressage, the question was not whether Germany would win, but how large its margin would be over the rest.
The hosts had a 23-penalty lead going into cross-country and, even though a man down following the fall of Andreas Dibowski, had nearly doubled it by Saturday night.
Britain was still clinging on to silver, having lost Mary King on cross-country with Imperial Cavalier (her first ever fall in a championship appearance). But in an influential show jumping phase, single errors by William Fox-Pitt (Cool Mountain) and Piggy French (Jakata) allowed France to slip ahead, leaving the team title-defenders in bronze - nice, but not quite where Britain wants to be in a competition that is, for obvious reasons, missing strong eventing nations New Zealand, Australia and the USA.
Germany has always been good at dressage and show jumping – both in eventing and the specialist disciplines – but cross-country was its Achilles heel, now improved considerably by their English trainer, Christopher Bartle, and they are peaking just right for 2012.
As it turned out, Germany needed this substantial team lead because its overnight leader, Ingrid Klimke’s Butts Abraxxas, crashed through six show jumps. But a succession of other talented Germans simply moved up a place each – Jung into gold, newcomer Sandra Auffarth into silver (on Opgun Luovo, who impressed at the Luhmuhlen four-star in June), Frank Ostholt into bronze on Little Paint (who has been off work for two years), and Dirk Schrade into fourth on King Artus. This is the first time one country has had three riders on the individuals’ podium as well as winning the team gold since Britain in 1991.
La Biosthetique Sam is a wonder horse and Jung is versatile – he also show jumps at the specialist level, as does Auffarth. Before the final phase, course designer and BBC commentator Mike Tucker took out a five-to-one bet that Jung would be world, European and Olympic champion at the same time, now looking like a very good value indeed.
On paper, Britain should have been the ones walking away with the European title – again. We fielded three of our gold medal-winning squad from the 2010 world championships – King (current leader of the HSBC Classics global rankings), Fox-Pitt (on his world individual silver medallist), Nicola Wilson on the glorious Opposition Buzz, probably the most coveted cross-country trailblazer in the world, and French, defending her 2009 European individual silver medal on the horse second at Badminton.
The trouble is, European championships run at the lesser three-star level and this leaves nations that are not stand-out brilliant at eventing dressage very exposed when the cross-country track rides relatively well (56 of 70 starters completed, a good statistic).
Germany was under no pressure to take cross-country risks, though its team riders did so willingly and with aplomb. But for once, every nano-second counted for Britain and although Wilson and Fox-Pitt got home quickly, French was 17 seconds over the 10 min, 5 secs time allowed – hardly the worst recorded instance of poor judgement but she was nonetheless in tears.
The three-star test also means that individuals from nations not necessarily in contention for a team medal find the cross-country well within their comfort zone. This is why riders rarely or never spotted at four-star Badminton and Burghley often feature on a European championship leader-board; exasperating, but that’s the sport.
In a previous era, judges had licence to adjust the scoring co-efficient so that dressage did not over-influence the final result. Even if that tool still existed, one could not argue it should have been applied this weekend, and if nothing else, Luhmuehlen highlighted what Britain needs to finesse before 2012.
The London Olympics will be staged at the upper four-star level and over an arduous terrain at Greenwich. This will strengthen the cross-country influence, and good dressage scorers like Miners Frolic (Tina Cook’s 2008 Olympic bronze medallist) and Redesigned (Pippa Funnell) should be back in contention for Britain after virtually the whole 2011 season on the sidelines.
A final word for Fox-Pitt, who kept Britain’s medal chances alive on cross-country with the competition’s two “You-Tube” moments. First, Cool Mountain capsized and, after some underwater gymnastics, surfaced with 6ft 6in Fox-Pitt still firmly in the saddle. Later, he should surely have tipped over after scuttling across the top of a combination fence instead of jumping it, again defying the laws of physics. ”It is a measure of the horse that he kept going with water down his ears, up his nose and in his lungs,” said Fox-Pitt, modestly omitting that his own sheer force of personality had a little to do with it too!
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